We 

AUTOMOBILIST 
ABROAD 



B>^ FRANCIS cTWILTOUN 

Author of " Rambles in Normandy," " Rambles in Brittany," " Rambles 
on the Riviera," "The Cathedrals of Northern France," " The Cathedrals 
of Southern France," " The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine," etc. 

With man)) illustrations from photo- 
graphs, decorai pians 

(See page 182) 




L. C. PAGE C& COMPANY 
BOSTON MDCCCCVII 



AUTOMOBILIST 
ABROAD 



By FRANCIS cTWILTOUN 

^Author of " Rambles in Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany," "Rambles 
on the Riviera," "The Cathedrals cf Northern France," " The Cathedrals 
of Southern France," " The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine," etc. 

With many illustrations from photo- 
graphs, decorations, maps and plans 

By BLANCHE McMANUS 




L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 
BOSTON MDCCCCVII 



LIBRARY of 00N6RESS 
Two Cooies Received 
JUN 10 190/ 
n CoDynffM Entry 

$ASS ft XX«.. N«. 

COPY B. 






^ 



Copyright, 1907, by L. C. Page 
and Company (Incorporated) 



Entered at Stationer's Hall, London 



All rights reserved 



First impression, May, 1907 



Colonial Press: Electrotyped 
and Printed by C. H.Simonds 
CB. Company, Boston, U.S.A. 



preface 

The general plan of this book is not original. 
It tells of some experiences not altogether new, and 
contains observations and facts that have been 
noted by other writers; but the author hopes that, 
from the viewpoint of an automobilist at least, its 
novelty will serve as a recommendation. As a 
pastime automobile touring is still new and is not 
yet accomplished without some considerable annoy- 
ance and friction. The conventional guides are 
of little assistance; and the more descriptive works 
on travel fail too often to note the continually 
changing conditions which affect the tourist alike 
by road and rail. 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

PART I 

I. An Appreciation of the Automobile . . 3 

II. Travel Talk . . . . .19 

III. Roads and Routes 41 

IV. Hotels and Things 66 

V. The Grand Tour 87 

PART II 

I. Down through Touraine : Paris to Bordeaux 103 

II. A Little Tour in the Pyrenees . . . 121 

III. In Languedoc and Old Provence . . . 147 

IV. By Rh6ne and Sa6ne 163 

V. By Seine and Oise — A Cruise in a Canot - 

automobile 181 

VI. The Road to the North 202 

PART III 

I. The Bath Road • 225 

II. The South Coast 243 

III. Land's End to John o' Groat's . . . 267 

PART IV 

I. On the Road in Flanders 285 

II. By Dykes and Windmills 301 

III. On the Road by the Rhine .... 321 



Appendices 
Index 



335 
375 



List of Full-page Plates 

PAGE 

Hotel Bellevue, Les Andelys (See page 182). Frontispiece 

" Speed " 13 

Paris and London Traffic 14 

On French Roads 46 v 

Some Mile - stones 63 

In French Hotels 80 

On English Roads 88 

Road Map of France, Belgium, and the Rhine Facing 102 

Midnight at a Wayside Inn in France . . . 104 

In Touraine 108 

La Rochelle 113 

Bordeaux, the Gateway to the Landes . . . 116 

Profile Map of the Pyrenees . . . Facing 120 

The " Coupe des Pyrenees " 122 

Some Snap-shots in the Pyrenees .... 130 

On the Road in the Pyrenees 140 

Peasants of the Crau 156 

St. Blaise — Les Saintes — At Martigues — St. 

Mitre 158- 

Avignon — Tournon 171 

Meulan — Vernon — Mantes — Auvers . . . 192' 

At a French Inn 194 

DOUAI VlLLIERS - COTTERETS — Cr^PY - EN - VALOIS . 218- 

On the Bath Road 226 

The Road by the Thames ...... 230 ■ 

On the Thames at Henley 232 

Ryde — Newhaven — Isle of Wight — Royal Yacht 

Squadron — Folkestone — Arundel Castle . 261 

Near Land's End — St. Michael's Mount . . 271 

Taunton, Exeter, and Bristol 275 

ix 



List of Full-page Plates 



Scottish Highlands .... 

Wick, Inverness, and John o' Groat's 

Things Seen in Flanders 

A Street in Antwerp .... 

"As Par as We Go " . 

The Polders — Scheveningen 

Amsterdam, Delftshaven, and Rotterdam 

The Road by the Rhine 

Heidelberg amd Strasburg . 

The Evolution of the Racing Automobile 



PAGE 

280 ^ 

282-., 

294 

297 

302 

311 

314 

322- 

332 

340 



i 



PART I 

GENERAL INFORMATION —THE GRAND 
TOUR 




Jfipp. 



OF THE 

£^Lufomo6i'/e 

We have progressed appreciably beyond the 
days of the old horseless carriage, which, it will 
be remembered, retained even the dashboard. 

To-day the modern automobile somewhat re- 
sembles, in its outlines, a cross between a decapod 
locomotive and a steam fire-engine, or at least 
something concerning the artistic appearance of 
which the layman has very grave doubts. 

The control of a restive horse, a cranky boat, 

3 



4 The Automobilist Abroad 

or even a trolley-car on rails is difficult enough 
for the inexperienced, and there are many who 
would quail before making the attempt; but to 
the novice in charge of an automobile, some seri- 
ous damage is likely enough to occur within an 
incredibly short space of time, particularly if he 
does not take into account the tremendous force 
and power which he controls merely by the mov- 
ing of a tiny lever, or by the depressing of a 
pedal. 

Any one interested in automobiles should know 
something of the literature of the subject, which, 
during the last decade, has already become formi- 
dable. 

In English the literature of the automobile 
begins with Mr. Worby Beaumont's Cantor Lec- 
tures (1895), and the pamphlet by Mr. R. Jenkins 
on " Power Locomotion on the Highways," pub- 
lished in 1896. 

In the library of the Patent Office in London 
the literature of motor road vehicles already fills 
many shelves. The catalogue is interesting as 
showing the early hopes that inventors had in 
connection with steam as a motive power for light 
road vehicles, and will be of value to all who are 
interested in the history of the movement or the 
progress made in motor-car design. 

In France the Bibliotheque of the Touring 
Club de France contains a hundred entries 
under the caption " Automobiles," besides com- 
plete files of eleven leading journals devoted to 
that industry. With these two sources of infor- 
mation at hand, and aided by the records of the 



An Appreciation of the Automobile 5 

Automobile Club de France and the Automobile 
Club of Great Britain and Ireland, the present- 
day historian of the automobile will find the sub- 
ject w>ell within his grasp. 

There are those who doubt the utility of the 
automobile, as there have been scoffers at most 
new things under the sun; and there have been 
critics who have derided it for its ' ' seven deadly 
sins, ' ' as there have been others who have praised 
its " Christian graces." The parodist who wrote 
the following newspaper quatrain was no enemy 
of the automobile in spite of his cynicism. 

" A look of anguish underneath the car, 
Another start ; — a squeak, — a grunt, — a jar ! 

The Aspiration pipe is working loose ! 
The vapour can't get out ! And there you are I 



" Strange is it not, that of the myriads who 
Have Empty Tanks and know not what to do, 

Not one will tell of it when he Returns. 
As for Ourselves, — why, we deny it, too." 

The one perfectly happy man in an automobile 
is he who drives, steers, or " runs the thing," 
even though he be merely the hired chauffeur. 
For proof of this one has only to note how readily 
others volunteer to ' ' spell him a bit, ' ' as the say- 
ing goes. Change of scene and the exhilaration 
of a swift rush through space are all very well for 
friends in the tonneau, but for real " pleasure " 
one must be the driver. Not even the manifold 
responsibilities of the post will mar one's enjoy- 



6 The Automobilist Abroad 

ment, and there is always a supreme satisfaction 
in keeping one's engine running smoothly. 

" Nothing to watch but the road," is the gen- 
eral motto for the automobile manufacturer, but 
the enthusiastic automobilist goes farther, and, 
for his motto, takes " stick to your post," and, 
in case of danger, as one has put it, ' ' pull every- 
thing you see, and put your foot on everything 
else. ' ' 

The vocabulary of the automobile has produced 
an entirely new ' ' jargon, ' ' which is Greek to the 
multitude, but, oh, so expressive and full of mean- 
ing to the initiated. 

An automobile is masculine, or feminine, as 
one likes to think of it, for it has many of the 
vagaries of both sexes. The French Academy 
has finally come to the fore and declared the word 
to be masculine, and so, taking our clue once more 
from the French (as we have in most things in 
the automobile world), we must call it him, and 
speak of it as he, instead of her, or she. 

That other much overworked word in automo- 
bilism, chauffeur, should be placed once for all. 
The driver of an automobile is not really a chauf- 
feur, neither is he who minds and cares for the 
engine; he is a mecanicien and nothing else — 
in France and elsewhere. "We needed a word for 
the individual who busies himself with, or drives 
an automobile, and so we have adapted the word 
chauffeur. Purists may cavil, but nevertheless 
the word is better than driver, or motor-man 
(which is the quintessence of snobbery), or con- 
ductor. 



An Appreciation of the Automobile 7 

The word, chauffeur, the Paris Figaro tells us, 
was known long before the advent of automobiles 
or locomotives. History tells that about the year 
1795, men strangely accoutred, their faces cov- 
ered with soot and their eyes carefully disguised, 
entered, by night, farms and lonely habitations 
and committed all sorts of depredations. They 
garroted their victims, or dragged them before a 
great fire where they burned the soles of their 
feet, and demanded information as to the where- 
abouts of their money and jewels. Hence they 
were called chauffeurs, a name which frightened 
our grandfathers as much as the scorching chauf- 
feur to-day frightens our grandchildren. 

A motor-car is a fearsome thing, — when it 
goes, it goes; and when it doesn't, something, or 
many things, are wrong. A few years ago this 
uncertainty was to be expected, for, though the 
makers will not whisper it in Gath, we are only 
just getting out of the bone-shaker age of auto- 
mobiles. 

Every one remembers what a weirdly ungrace- 
ful thing was the first safety bicycle, and so was 
the gaudy painted-up early locomotive — and 
they are so yet on certain English lines where 
their early Victorian engines are like Kipling's 
ocean tramp, merely " puttied up with paint." 
So with the early automobiles, they jarred and 
jerked and stopped — that is, under all but excep- 
tional conditions. Occasionally they did wonder- 
ful things, — they always did, in fact, when one 
took the word of their owners; but now they 
really do acquit themselves with credit, and so the 



8 The Automobilist Abroad 

public, little by little, is beginning to believe in 
them, even though the millennium has not arrived 
when every home possesses its own runabout. 

All this proves that we are " getting there " 
by degrees, and meantime everybody that has to 
do with motor-cars has learned a great deal, gen- 
erally at somebody else's expense. 

To-day every one " motes," or wants to, and 
likewise a knowledge of many things mechanical, 
which had heretofore been between closed covers, 
is in the daily litany of many who had previously 
never known a clutch from a cam-shaft, or a 
sparking plug from a fly-wheel. 

Most motor enthusiasts read all the important 
journals devoted to the game. The old-stager 
reads them for their hints and suggestions, — 
though these are bewildering in their multiplicity 
and their contradictions, — and the ladies of the 
household look at them for the sake of their pretty 
pictures of scenery and ladies and veils and furry 
garments pertaining to the sport. 

Catalogues are another bane of the motorist's 
life. He may have just become possessed of the 
latest thing in a Mercedes (and paid an enhanced 
price for an early delivery), yet upon seeing some 
new make of car advertised, he will immediately 
send for a catalogue and prospectus, and make 
the most absurd inquiries as to what said car will 
or will not do. 

Since the pleasures of motoring have found 
their champions in Kipling, Maeterlinck, and the 
late W. E. Henley, the delectable amusement has, 
besides entering the daily life of most of us, gen- 



An Appreciation of the Automobile 9 




Types of Touring-can 



10 The Automobilist Abroad 

erously permeated literature — real literature as 
distinct from recent popular fiction ; ' ' The Light- 
ning Conductor " and " The Princess Passes," by 
Mrs. Williamson, and more lately, " The Motor 
Pirate," by Mr. Paternoster. " A Motor Car 
Divorce " is the suggestive title of another work, 
— presumably fiction, — and one knows not where 
it may end, since ' ' The Happy Motorist, ' ' a series 
of essays, is already announced. 

A Drury Lane melodrama of a season or two 
ago gave us a " thrillin' hair-bre'dth 'scape," 
wherein an automobile plunged precipitately — 
with an all too-true realism, the first night — 
down a lath and canvas ravine, finally saving the 
heroine from the double-dyed villain who fol- 
lowed so closely in her wake. 

The last entry into other spheres was during 
the autumn just past, when Paris 's luxurious 
opera-house was given over to the fantastic revels 
of the ballet in an attempt to typify the apotheo- 
sis of the automobile. This was rather a rash 
venture in prognostication, for it may be easy 
enough to " apotheosize " the horse, but to 
what idyllic heights the automobile is destined 
to ultimately reach no one really knows. 

The average scoffer at things automobilistic is 
not very sincerely a scoffer at heart. It is mostly 
a case of " sour grapes," and he only waits the 
propitious combination of circumstances which 
shall permit him to become a possessor of a 
motor-car himself. This is not a very difficult 
procedure. It simply means that he must give 



An Appreciation of the Automobile 11 

up some other fad or fancy and take up with this 
last, which, be it here reiterated, is no fad. 

The great point in favour of the automobile is 
its sociability. Once one was content to potter 
about with a solitary companion in a buggy, with 
a comfortable old horse who knew his route well 
by reason of many journeys. To-day the auto- 
mobile has driven thoughts of solitude to the 
winds. Two in the tonneau, and another on the 
seat beside you in front — a well-assorted couple 
of couples — and one may make the most ideal 
trips imaginable. 

Every one looks straight ahead, there is no un- 
comfortable twisting and turning as there is on 
a boat or a railway train, and each can talk to the 
others, or all can talk at once, which is more often 
the case. It is most enjoyable, plenty to see, ex- 
hilarating motion, jolly company, absolute inde- 
pendence, and a wide radius of action. What 
other mode of travel can combine all these joys 
unless it be ballooning — of which the writer con- 
fesses he knows nothing? 

On the road one must ever have a regard for 
what may happen, and roadside repairs, however 
necessary, are seldom more than makeshifts which 
enable one to arrive at his destination. 

If you break the bolt which fastens your car- 
dan-shaft, or a link of your side-chains, you and 
your friends will have a chance to harden your 
muscles a bit pushing the machine to the next 
village, unless you choose to wait, on perhaps a 
lonely road, for a passing cart whose driver is 
willing, for a price, to detach his tired horse to 



12 The Automobilist Abroad 

draw your dead weight of a ton and a half over 
a few miles of hill and dale. This is readily 
enough accomplished in France, where the peas- 
ant looks upon the procedure as a sort of allied 
industry to farming, but in parts of England, in 
Holland, and frequently in Italy, where the little 
mountain donkey is the chief means of trans- 
portation, it is more difficult. 

The question of road speed proves nothing with 
regard to the worth of an individual automobile, 
except that the times do move, and we are learn- 
ing daily more and more of the facility of getting 
about with a motor-car. A locomotive, or a 
marine engine, moves regularly without a stop 
for far greater periods of time than does an auto- 
mobile, but each and every time they finish a run 
they receive such an overhauling as seldom comes 
to an automobile. 

In England the automobilist has had to suffer 
a great deal at the hands of ignorant and intol- 
erant road builders and guardians. Police traps, 
on straight level stretches miles from any collec- 
tion of dwellings, will not keep down speed so 
long as dangerous cobblestoned alleys, winding 
through suburban London towns, have no guar- 
dian to regulate the traffic or give the stranger a 
hint that he had best go slowly. 

The milk and butchers' carts go on with their 
deadly work, but the police in England are too 
busy worrying the motorist to pay any atten- 
tion. 

Some county boroughs have applied a ten-mile 
speed limit, even though the great bulk of their 



An Appreciation of the Automobile 13 

area is open country; but twenty miles an hour 
for an automobile is far safer for the public than 
is most other traffic, regardless of the rate at 
which it moves. 

Speed, so far as the bystander is concerned, is 
a very difficult thing to judge, and the automo- 
bilist seldom, if ever, gets fair treatment if he 
meets with the slightest accident. 

Most people judge the speed of an automobile 
by the noise that it makes. This, up to within a 
few years, put most automobiles going at a slow 
speed at a great disadvantage, for the slower 
they went the noisier they were; but matters of 
design and control have changed this somewhat, 
and the public now protests because " a great 
death-dealing monster crept up silently behind — 
coming at a terrific rate." You cannot please 
every one, and you cannot educate a non-partici- 
pating public all at once. 

As for speed on the road, it is a variable thing, 
and a thing difficult to estimate correctly. Elec- 
tric cars run at a speed of from ten to twenty-two 
miles an hour in England, even in the towns, and 
no one says them nay. Hansoms, on the Thames 
Embankment in London, do their regular fifteen 
miles an hour, but automobiles are still held down 
to ten. 

The official timekeeper of the Automobile Club 
of Great Britain and Ireland took the following 
times (in 1905) in Piccadilly, one of the busiest, 
if not the most congested thoroughfare in Lon- 
don. 



14 The Automobilist Abroad 

Holloway horse-drawn 'bus 11.3 miles per hour 

Cyclist 15.85 « « " 

Private trap 13.08 " « " 

Private buggy 13.55 " " " 

Private brougham 14.80 " " « 

When one considers how difficult to control, 
particularly amid crowded traffic, a horse-drawn 
vehicle is, and how very easy it is to control an 
up-to-date automobile, one cannot but feel that 
a little more consideration should be shown the 
automobilist by those in authority. 

The road obstructions, slow-going traffic which 
will not get out of one's way, carts left unat- 
tended and the like, make most of the real and 
fancied dangers which are laid to the door of the 
very mobile motor-car. 

In Holland and Belgium dogs seem to be the 
chief road obstructions, or at least dangers, not 
always willingly perhaps, but still ever-present. 
In England it is mostly children. 

In France not all the difficulties one meets with 
en route are wilful obstructors of one's progress. 
In La Beauce the geese and ducks are prudent, in 
the Nivernais the oxen are placid, and in Pro- 
vence the donkeys are philosophical ; but in Brit- 
tany the horses and mules and their drivers take 
fright immediately they suspect the coming of an 
automobile, and in the Vendee the market- 
wagons, and those laden with the product of the 
vine, career madly at the extremities of exceed- 
ingly lusty examples of horse flesh to the pending 
disaster of every one who does not get out of the 
road. 



An Appreciation of the Automobile 15 

Sheep and hens are everywhere that they ought 
not to be, and there seems no way of escaping 
them. One can but use all his ingenuity and slip 
through somehow. Dogs are bad enough and 
ought to be exterminated. They are the silliest 
beasts which one finds uncontrolled on the road- 
ways. Children, of course, one defers to, but they 
are outrageously careless and very foolish at 
times, and in short are the greatest responsibility 
for the driver in the small towns of England and 
France. In France some effort is being made in 
the schools to teach them something about a 
proper regard for automobile traffic, and with 
good results; but no one has heard of anything 
of the sort being attempted in England. 




CHAPTER n 



TRAVEL TALK 



Touring abroad is nothing new, but, as an 
amusement for the masses, it has reached gigan- 
tic proportions. The introduction of the railroad 
gave it its greatest impetus, and then came the 
bicycle and the automobile. 

With the railway as the sole means of getting 
about one was more or less confined to the beaten 
track of travel in Continental Europe, but the 
automobile has changed all this. 

To-day, the Cote d'Azur, from St. Raphael to 
Menton, as well as the strip of Norman coast-line 
around Trouville, in summer, is scarcely more 
than a boulevard where the automobile tourist 
strolls for an hour as he does in the Bois. The 
country lying back and between these two widely 
separated points is becoming known, and even 
modern taste prefers the idyllic countryside to a 
round of the same dizzy conventions that one gets 
in season at Paris, London, or New York. 

France is the land par excellence for automo- 
bile touring, not only from its splendid roads, but 
from the wide diversity of its sights and scenes, 
and manners and customs, and, last but not least, 
its most excellent hotels strung along its high- 
ways and byways like pearls in a collarette. 

10 



20 The Automobilist Abroad 

This is not saying that travel by automobile is 
not delightful elsewhere; certainly it is equally 
so in many places along the Rhine, in Northern 
Italy, and in England, where the chief drawback 
is the really incompetent catering of the English 
country hotel-keeper to the demands of the trav- 
eller who would dine off of something more at- 
tractive than a cut from a cold joint of ham, and 
eggs washed down with stodgy, bitter beer. 

The bibliography of travel books is long, and 
includes many famous names in literature. 
Marco Polo, Froissart, Mme. de Sevigne, Taine, 
Bayard Taylor, Willis, Stevenson, and Sterne, all 
had opportunities for observation and made the 
most of them. If they had lived in the days of 
the automobile they might have sung a song of 
speed which would have been the most melodious 
chord in the whole gamut. 

A modern writer must be more modest, how- 
ever. He can hardly hope to attract attention 
to himself or his work by describing the usual 
sights and scenes. The most he can do is to set 
down his method of travel, his approach, and his 
departure, and, for example, to tell those who 
may come after that the great double spires of 
Notre Dame de Chartres are a beacon by land 
for nearly twenty kilometres in any direction, as 
he approaches them by road across the great 
plain of La Beauce, the granary of France, rather 
than give a repetition of the well-worn guide- 
book facts concerning them. 

Chartres is taken as an example because it is 
one of those " stock " sights, before mentioned, 



Travel Talk 



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22 The Automobilist Abroad 

which any itinerary coming within the scope of 
the grand tour is bound to include. 

Almost the same phenomenon is true of Ant- 
werp's lacelike spire, the great Gothic wonder 
of Cologne, and, to a lesser extent, that of Canter- 
bury in England; thus the automobilist en route 
has his beacons and landmarks as has the sailor 
on the seas. 

Man is an animal essentially mobile. He moves 
readily from place to place and is not tied down 
by anything but ways and means and, perhaps, 
confinement at laborious affairs. Even in the 
latter case he occasionally breaks away for a 
more or less extended period, and either goes 
fishing in Canada, shooting in Scotland, or auto- 
mobiling in France, with perhaps a rush over a 
Swiss pass or two, and a dash around the Italian 
lakes, and back down the Rhine for a little tour 
in Great Britain. 

This is as delightful a holiday as one could 
imagine, and the foreign tour — which has often 
been made merely a succession of nights of travel 
in stuffy sleeping-cars or a round of overfeeding 
orgies at Parisian hotels and restaurants — has 
added charms of which the generation before the 
advent of automobiles knew nought. 

The question of comfortable travel is a never- 
ending one. The palanquin, the sedan-chair, the 
rickshaw, even the humble horse-drawn buggy 
have had their devotees, but the modern touring 
automobile has left them all far behind, whether 
for long-distance travel or promenades at Fon- 
tainebleau, in the New Forest or the Ardennes. 



Travel Talk 23 

There is no question but that, when touring in 
an automobile, one has an affection for his steel- 
and-iron horse that he never felt for any other 
conveyance. The horse had some endearing 
qualities, no doubt, and we were bound to regard 
his every want; but he was only a part of the 
show, whereas the automobile, although it is 
nought but an inanimate combination of wheels 
and things, has to be humoured and talked to, and 
even cursed at times, in order to keep it going. 
But it works faithfully nevertheless, and never 
balks, at least not with the same crankiness as 
the horse, and always runs better toward night 
(this is curious, but it is a fact), which a horse 
seldom does. All the same an automobile is like 
David Balfour's Scotch advocate: hard at times 
to ken rightly — most of the time, one may say 
without undue exaggeration. Often an auto- 
mobile is as fickle as a stage fairy, or appears to 
be, but it may be that only your own blind stupid- 
ity accounts for the lack of efficiency. Once in 
awhile an automobile gets uproariously full of 
spirits and runs away with itself, and almost 
runs away with you, too, simply for the reason 
that the carburation is good and everything is 
pulling well. Again it is as silent and immovable 
as a sphinx and gives no hint of its present or 
expected ailments. It is most curious, but an auto- 
mobile invents some new real or fancied com- 
plaint with each fresh internal upheaval, and re- 
quires, in each and every instance, an entirely 
new and original diagnosis. 

With all its caprices, however, the automobile 



24 The Automobilist Abroad 

is the most efficient and satisfactory contrivance 
for getting about from place to place, for busi- 
ness or pleasure, that was ever devised. 

Comparatively speaking, the railway is not to 
be thought of for a moment. It has all the dis- 
advantages of the automobile (for indeed there 
are a few, such as dust and more or less cramped 
quarters, and, if one chooses, a nerve-racking 
speed) and none of its advantages, and, whether 
you are a mere man or a millionaire, you are tied 
down to rails and a strict itinerary, whereas you 
may turn the bonnet of your automobile down 
any by-road that pleases your fancy, and arrive 
ultimately at your destination, having made an 
enjoyable detour which would not otherwise have 
been possible. 

Too great a speed undoubtedly detracts from 
the joy of travel, but a hundred and fifty, two 
hundred and fifty, or three hundred kilometres a 
day on the fine roads of France, or a hundred, or 
a hundred and fifty miles on the leafy lanes of 
England's southern counties will give the 
stranger more varied impressions and a clearer 
understanding of men and matters than the tour- 
ing of a country from end to end in express- 
trains which serve your meals en route, and whisk 
you from London to Torquay between tea and 
dinner, or from Paris to the Cote d'Azur between 
breakfast and nightfall. 

Just how much pleasure and edification one can 
absorb during an automobile tour depends largely 
upon the individual — and the mood. Once the 
craving for speed is felt, not all the historic 



Travel Talk 25 

monuments in the world would induce one to stop 
a sweetly running motor; but again the other 
mood comes on, and one lingers a full day among 
the charms of the lower Seine from Caudebec to 
Rouen, scarce thirty miles. 

Les Andelys-sur-Seine, your guide-book tells 
you, is noted for its magnificent ruins of Richard 
Cceur de Lion's Chateau Gaillard, and for the 
culture of the sugar-beet, and so, often, merely 
on account of the banal mention of beet-roots, 
you ignore the attractions of Richard 's castle and 
make the best time you can Parisward by the 
great Route Nationale on the other side of the 
Seine. This is wrong, of course, but the mood 
was on, and the song of speed was ringing in your 
ears and nothing would drive it out. 

Our fathers and grandfathers made the grand 
tour, in a twelvemonth, as a sort of topping-off to 
their early education, before they settled down to 
a business or professional life. 

They checked off in their guide-books Melrose 
Abbey, the Tower of London, the Cathedral of 
Canterbury, and those of Antwerp, Cologne, 
Rome, Venice, and Paris, as they did the Cheshire 
Cheese, Mont Blanc, and the ruins of Carnac. It 
was all a part of the general scheme of travel, to 
cover a lot of ground and see all they could, for 
it was likely that they would pass that way but 
once. Why, then, should one blame the automo- 
bilist — who really travels very leisurely in that 
he sees a lot of the countryside manners and cus- 
toms off the beaten track — if he rushes over an 



26 The Automobilist Abroad 

intermediate stretch of country in order to arrive 
at one more to his liking? 

One sees the thing every day on any of the 
great highroads in France leading from the 
Channel ports. One's destination may be the 
Pyrenees, the Cote d'Azur, Italy, or even Austria, 
and he does the intermediate steps at full speed. 
The same is true if he goes to Switzerland by the 
Rhine valley, or to Homburg by passing through 
Belgium or Holland. He might be just as well 
pleased with a fortnight in the Ardennes, or even 
in Holland or in Touraine, but, if his destination 
is Monte Carlo or Biarritz, he is not likely to 
linger longer by the way than the exigencies of 
food, drink, and lodging, and the care of his 
automobile demand. 

When he has no objective point he loiters by 
the way and no doubt enjoys it the more, but it 
is not fair to put the automobilist down as a 
scorcher simply because he is pushing on. The 
best guide-books are caprice and fantasy, if you 
are not pressed for time. 

Mile-stones, or rather homes kilometriques, line 
the roadways of Continental military Europe mer- 
cilessly, and it's a bad sign when the chauffeur 
begins to count them off. All the same, he knows 
his destination a great deal better than does some 
plodding tourist by rail who scorns him for rush- 
ing off again immediately after lunch. 

One of the charms of travel, to the tried trav- 
eller, is, just as in the time of the Abbe Prevost, 
the ability to exchange remarks on one 's itinerary 
with one's fellow travellers. In France it does 



Travel Talk 27 

not matter much whether they are automobilists 
or not. The commis-voyageur is a more numer- 
ous class here, apparently, than in any other 
country on the globe, and the detailed informa- 
tion which he can give one about the towns and 
hotels and sights and scenes en route, albeit he 
is more familiar with travel by rail than by road, 
is marvellous in quantity and valuable as to qual- 
ity. 

The automobile tourist, who may be an English- 
man or an American, has hitherto been catered 
to with automobile novels, or love stories, or 
whatever one chooses to call them, or with more 
or less scrappy, incomplete, and badly edited ac- 
counts of tours made by some millionaire pos- 
sessor of a motor-car, or the means to hire one. 
Some of the articles in the press, and an occa- 
sional book, have the merit of having been ' ' good 
stuff," but often they have gone wrong in the 
making. 

The writer of this book does not aspire to be 
classed with either of the above classes of able 
writers; the most he would like to claim is that 
he should be able to write a really good hand- 
book on the subject, wherein such topographical, 
historical, and economic information as was pre- 
sented should have the stamp of correctness. 
Perhaps four years of pretty constant automo- 
bile touring in Europe ought to count for some- 
thing in the way of accumulated pertinent infor- 
mation concerning hotels and highways and by- 
ways. 

Not all automobilists are millionaires. The 



28 The Automobilist Abroad 

man of moderate means is the real giver of im- 
petus to the wheels of automobile progress. The 
manufacturers of motor-cars have not wholly 
waked up to this fact as yet, but the increasing 
number of tourists in small cars, both in England 
and in France, points to the fact that something 
besides the forty, sixty, or hundred horse-power 
monsters are being manufactured. 

Efficiency and reliability is the great requisite 
of the touring automobile, and, for that matter, 
should be of any other. Efficiency and reliability 
cover ninety -nine per cent, of the requirements of 
the automobilist. Chance will step in at the most 
inopportune moments and upset all calculations, 
but, with due regard given to these two great and 
fundamental principles, the rest does not much 
matter. 

It is a curious fact that the great mass of town 
folk, in France and probably elsewhere, still have 
a fear and dread of the mechanism of the auto- 
mobile. " C'est beau la mecanique, mais c'est 
tout de meme an peu complique," they say, as 
they regard your labours in posing a new valve 
or tightening up a joint here and there. 

The development of the automobile has brought 
about a whole new development of kindred things, 
as did the development of the battle-ship. First 
there was the battle-ship, then the cruiser, and 
then the torpedo-boat, and then another class of 
boats, the destroyers (destined to catch torpedo- 
boats), and finally the submarine. With the auto- 
mobile the evolution was much the same; first it 
was a sort of horseless carriage, for town use, 



Travel Talk 29 

then something a little more powerful that would 
climb hills, so that one might journey afield, and 
then the " touring-car," and then the racing ma- 
chine, and now we have automobile omnibuses, 
and even automobile ambulances to pick up any 
frightened persons possessed of less agility than 
a kangaroo or a jack-rabbit who might inadvert- 
ently have been bowled over. These disasters are 
seldom the automobilist's fault, and, happily, 
they are becoming fewer and fewer; but the in- 
decision that overcame the passer-by, in the 
early days of the bicycle, still exists with many 
whenever an automobile comes in sight, and they 
back, and fill, and worry the automobilist into such 
a bad case of nerves that, in spite of himself, 
something of the nature of an accident, for which 
he is in no way responsible, really does happen. 

Once the writer made eleven hundred kilo- 
metres straight across France, from the Manche 
to the Mediterranean, and not so much as a 
puncture occurred. On another occasion a little 
journey of half the length resulted in the gen- 
eral smashing up, four times in succession, of a 
little bolt (no great disaster in itself), within 
the interior arrangements of the motor, which 
necessitated a half a day's work on each occasion 
in taking down the cylinder and setting it up 
again, and each time in a small town far away 
from any properly equipped machine-shop, and 
with the assistance only of the local locksmith. 
It's astonishing how good a job a locksmith in 
France can do, even on an automobile, the 
mechanism of which he perhaps has never seen 



30 The Automobilist Abroad 

before. Officially the locksmith in France is 
known as a serrurier, but in the slang of the land 
he is the cambrioleur du pays, a name which is 
expressive, but which means nothing wicked. He 
can put a thread on a bolt or make a new nut to 
replace one that has mysteriously unscrewed it- 
self, which is more than many a mere bicycle 
repairer can do. 

The automobilist touring France should make 
friends with the nearest cambrioleur if he is in 
trouble. In England this is risky, a " gas-pipe- 
thread " being the average lay workman's idea 
of " fixing you up." 

Away back in Chaucer's day folk were " longen 
to gon on pilgrimage," and it does not matter 
in the least what the ways and means may be, the 
motive is ever the same : a change of scene. 

This book is no unbounded eulogy of the auto- 
mobile, although its many good qualities are 
recognized. There are other methods of travel 
that, in their own ways, are certainly enjoyable, 
but none quite equal the automobile for indepen- 
dence of action, convenience, and efficiency. It 
is well for all motor-car users, however, to realize 
that they are not the only road users, and to have 
a due regard for others, — not only their rights, 
but their persons. This applies even more forci- 
bly, if possible, to the automobilist en tour. 

One must in duty bound regulate his pace and 
his actions by the vagaries of others, however 
little he may want to, or unfortunate conse- 
quences will many times follow. Always he must 
have a sharp look ahead and must not neglect a 



Travel Talk 31 

backward glance now and then. He must not 
dash through muddy roads and splash passers-by 
(a particularly heinous offence in England), and 
in France he must observe the rule of the road 
(always to the right in passing, — no great diffi- 
culty for an American, but very puzzling to an 
Englishman), or an accident may result which 
will bring him into court, and perhaps into jail, 
unless he can assuage the poor peasant's feelings 
for the damaged forelegs of his horse or donkey 
by a cash payment on the spot. 

Maeterlinck's " wonderful, unknown beast " is 
still unknown (and feared) by the majority of 
outsiders, and the propaganda of education must 
go on for a long time yet. Maeterlinck's great 
tribute to the automobile is his regard for it as 
the conqueror of space. Never before has the 
individual man been able to accomplish what the 
soulless corporations have with railway trains. 
In steamboat or train we are but a part and par- 
cel of the freight carried, but in the automobile 
we are stoker, driver, and passenger in one, and 
regard every road-turning and landmark with a 
new wonder and appreciation. 

We are the aristocrats of tourists, and we are 
bound therefore to have a kindly regard for other 
road users or a revolution will spring up, as it did 
in feudal times. 

Take Maeterlinck's wise sayings for your guide, 
and be tolerant of the rights of others. This will 
do automobilism more good than can be meas- 
ured, for it has come to stay, and perhaps even 
advance. The days of the horse are numbered. 



32 The Automobilist Abroad 

" In accord with the needs of our insatiable, 
exacting soul, which craves at once for the small 
and the mighty, the quick and the slow; here it 
is of us at last, it is ours, and offers at every turn 
glimpses of beauty that, in former days, we could 
only enjoy when the tedious journey was ended." 

The " tour abroad " has ever been the lode- 
stone which has drawn countless thousands of 
home-loving English and Americans to Conti- 
nental Europe. Pleasure — mere pleasure — has 
accounted for many of these pilgrims, but by far 
the largest proportion have been those who seek 
education and edification combined. 

One likes to be well cared for when he journeys, 
whether by road or rail, and demands accord- 
ingly, if not all the comforts of home, at least 
many things that the native knows or cares little 
of. A Frenchman does not desire a sitting- 
room, a reading-room, or a fire in his sleeping- 
room, and, according to his lights, he is quite 
right. He finds all this at a cafe, and prefers to 
go there for it. The steam-heated hotel, with 
running water everywhere, is a rarity in France, 
as indeed it is in England. 

Outside Paris the writer has found this com- 
bination but seldom in France; at Lyons, Mar- 
seilles, Moulins in the Allier, and at Chatelle- 
rault in Poitou only. Modernity is making its 
way in France, but only in spots ; its progress is 
steady, but as yet it has not penetrated into many 
outlying districts. Modern art nouveau ideas in 
France, which are banal enough, but which are 
an improvement over the Eastlake and horsehair 



Travel Talk 33 

horrors of the Victorian and Louis-Philippe 
periods, are tending to eliminate old-fashioned 
ideas for the benefit of the traveller who would 
rather eat his meals in a bright, airy apartment 
than in a stuffy, dark hole known in England as 
a coffee-room. 

In France, in particular, the contrast of the 
new and old that one occasionally meets with is 
staggering. It is all very well in its way, this 
blending of antiquity and modernity, and gives 
one something of the thrill of romance, which 
most of us have in our make-up to a greater or 
lesser extent; but, on the other hand, romance 
gets some hard knocks when one finds a Roman 
sarcophagus used as a watering-trough, or a 
chapel as an automobile garage, as he often will 
in the Midi. 

One thing the American, and the Britisher to 
a lesser extent, be he automobilist or mere tour- 
ist, must fully realize, and that is that the tourist 
business is a more highly developed industry in 
Continental Europe than it is anywhere else. In 
Switzerland one may well say that it is a national 
industry, and in some parts of France (always 
omitting Paris, which is not France) it is prac- 
tically the same thing ; Holland and Belgium are 
not far behind, and neither is the Rhine country ; 
so that the tourist in Europe finds that creature 
comforts are always near at hand. The automo- 
bilist does not much care whether they are near 
at hand or not. If he doesn't find the accommo- 
dations he is looking for on the borders of Dart- 
moor, he can keep on to Exmoor, and if Nevers 



34 The Automobilist Abroad 

won't suit his purpose for the night he can get 
to Moulins in an hour. 

A hotel that is full and overflowing is no more 
a fear or a dread; the automobilist simply takes 
the road again and drops in on some market-town 
twenty, thirty, or fifty miles away and finds ac- 
commodations that are equally satisfactory, with 
the possibility — if he looks in at some little vis- 
ited spot like Meung or Beaugency in Touraine, 
Ecloo in Holland, or Reichenberg on the Rhine — 
that he will be more pleased with his surround- 
ings than he would be in the large towns which are 
marked in heavy-faced type in the railway guides, 
and whose hotels are starred by Baedeker. 

In most countries the passport is no longer a 
necessary document in the traveller's pocketbook, 
though the Britisher still fondly arms himself 
with this " protection," and the American will, 
if it occurs to him, be only too glad to contribute 
his dollars to the fees of his consulate or embassy 
in order to possess himself of a gaudy thing in 
parchment and gold which he can wave in front 
of any one whom he thinks transgresses his rights 
as an American citizen: " from the land of lib- 
erty, and don't you forget it." 

This is all very well and is no doubt the very 
essence of a proper patriotism, but the best piece 
d'identite for the foreigner who takes up his resi- 
dence in Prance for more than three months is 
a simple document which can be obtained from 
the commissaire de police. It will pass him any- 
where in France that a passport will, is more 
readily understood and accepted by the banker or 



Travel Talk 35 

post-offiee clerk as a personal identification, and 
will save the automobile chauffeur many an annoy- 
ance, if he has erred through lack of familiarity 
with many little unwritten laws of the land. 

The automobilist en tour always has the identi- 
fication papers of his automobile; in England 
his " License," and in France his " Certificat de 
Capacite " and " Recepisse de Declaration," 
which will accomplish pretty much all the pass- 
port of other days would do if one flourished it 
to-day before a stubborn octroi official or the 
caretaker of a historical monument. 

The membership card of the Italian, Swiss, or 
French touring clubs will do much the same thing, 
and no one should be without them, since member- 
ship in either one or all is not difficult or costly. 
(See Appendix.) 

France is the land par excellence for the tour- 
ist, whether by road or rail. The art of " le tou- 
risme " has been perfected by the French to even 
a higher degree than in Switzerland. There are 
numerous societies, clubs, and associations, from 
the all-powerful Touring Club de France down- 
ward, which are attracting not only the French 
themselves to many hitherto little-known corners 
of " la belle France," but strangers from over 
the frontiers and beyond the seas. These are not 
the tourists of the conventional kind, but those 
who seek out the little-worn roads. It is possible 
to do this if one travels intelligently by rail, but 
it is a great deal more satisfactorily done if one 
goes by road. 

Here and there, scattered all over France, in 



36 The Automobilist Abroad 

Dauphine, in Savoie, and in the Pyrenees, one 
finds powerful " Syndicats d'Initiative," which 
not only care for the tourist, but bring pressure 
to bear on the hotel-keeper and local authorities 
to provide something in the way of improve- 
ments, where they are needed, to make a roadway 
safe, or to restore a historical site or monument. 

In the Pyrenees, and in the Alps of Savoie and 
Dauphine, one finds everywhere the insignia of 
the " Club-Alpin Frangais," which caters with 
information, etc., not only to the mountain- 
climber, but to the automobilist and the general 
tourist as well. 

More powerful and effective than all — more 
so even than the famous Automobile Club de 
France — is the great Touring Club de France, 
which, with the patronage of the President of the 
Republic, and the influence of more than a hun- 
dred thousand members, is something more than 
a mere touring club. 

In the fourteen years of its existence not only 
has the Touring Club de France helped the tourist 
find his way about, but also has taken a leading 
part in the clearing away of the debris in many 
a moss-grown ruin and making of it a historical 
monument as pleasing to view as Jumieges on the 
Seine, or world-famed Les Baux in Provence. 

It has appointed itself the special guardian of 
roads and roadways, so far as the placing of sign- 
boards along the many important lines of com- 
munication is concerned; it has been the means 
of having dug up untold kilometres of Renais- 
sance pavement ; has made, almost at its own ex- 



Travel Talk 37 

pense, a magnificent forty-kilometre road known 
as the Corniche de l'Esterel; and has given the 
backward innkeeper such a shock that he has at 
last waked up to the needs of the twentieth-cen- 
tury traveller. All this is something for a touring 
organization to have accomplished, and when one 
can become a part and parcel of this great organ- 
ization, and a sharer in the special advantages 
which it has to offer to its members for the ab- 
surdly small sum of five francs per annum, the 
marvel is that it has not half a million members 
instead of a hundred thousand. 



CHAPTER in 



ROADS AND ROUTES 



44 Chacun suit dans ce monde une route incertaiue, 
Selon que son erreur le joue et le promene." 

— Boileau. 

The chief concern of the automobilist to-day, 
after his individual automobile, is the road ques- 
tion, the " Good Roads Question," as it has be- 
come generally known. In a new country, like 
America, it is to be expected that great connecting 
highways should be mostly in the making. It is 
to be regretted that the development should be 
so slow, but things have been improving in the 
last decade, and perhaps America will " beat the 
world " in this respect, as she has in many 
others, before many future generations have been 
born. 

In the excellence and maintenance of her roads 
France stands emphatically at the head of all 
nations, but even here noticeable improvement is 
going on. The terrific " Louis Quatorze pave," 
which one finds around Paris, is yearly growing 
less and less in quantity. The worst road-bed in 
France is that awful stretch from Bordeaux, via 
Bazas, to Pau in Navarre, originally due to the 
energy of Henri IV., and still in existence for a 
space of nearly a hundred kilometres. One 

41 



42 The Automobilist Abroad 

avoids it by a detour of some twenty odd kilo- 
metres, and the writer humbly suggests that here 
is an important unaccomplished work for the usu- 
ally energetic road authorities of France. 

After France the " good roads " of Britain 
come next, though in some parts of the country 
they are woefully inadequate to accommodate the 
fast-growing traffic by road, notably in London 
suburbs, while some of the leafy lanes over which 
poets rhapsodize are so narrow that the local 
laws prevent any automobile traffic whatever. As 
one unfortunate individual expressed it, " since 
the local authorities forbid automobiles on road- 
ways under sixteen feet in width, I am unable to 
get my motor-car within nine miles of my home ! " 

In England something has been done by late 
generations toward roads improvement. The 
first awakening came in 1820, and in 1832 the 
London-Oxford road had been so improved that 
the former time of the stage-coaches had been 
reduced from eight to six hours. Macadam in 
1830, and Stevenson in 1847, were the real fathers 
of the ' ' Roads Improvement Movement ' ' in Eng- 
land. The great faults of English roads are that 
they are narrow and winding, almost without ex- 
ception. There are 38,600 kilometres of highways 
(the figures are given on the metric scale for bet- 
ter comparison with Continental facts and fig- 
ures) and 160,900 of by-roads. There are sixty- 
six kilometres of roads to the square kilometre 
(kilometre car re). 

In Germany the roads system is very complex. 
In Baden, the Palatinate, and the Grand Duchy 



Roads and Routes 43 

of Hesse they cede nothing to the best roads any- 
where, but in the central and northern provinces 
they are, generally speaking, much poorer. There 
are fifty-four kilometres of roads of all grades to 
the kilometre carre. 

In Belgium the roads are greatly inferior to 
those of France, and there are immeasurable 
stretches of the vilest pavement the world has 
known, not only near the large towns, but great 
interior stretches as well. There are 17,500 kilo- 
metres of Chemins Vicinaux and 6,990 kilometres 
of Chemins de Grands Communications. They 
average, taken together, eighty-three kilometres to 
the kilometre carre. 

In Switzerland the roads are thoroughly good 
everywhere, but many, particularly mountain- 
roads, are entirely closed to automobile traffic, 
and the regulations in many of the towns are so 
onerous that it is anything but agreeable to make 
one's way through them. There are thirty-two 
kilometres to the kilometre carre. The Simplon 
Pass has only recently (1906) been opened to au- 
tomobile traffic. No departure can be made from 
Brigue, on the Swiss side, or from Gondo, in Italy, 
after three p. m. Speed {v it esse) must not exceed 
ten kilometres on the stretches, or two kilometres 
around the corners. Fines for infringement of 
the law run from twenty to five hundred francs. 

Italy, with a surface area one-half that of 
France, has but a quarter of the extent of the 
good roads. They are of variable quality, but 
good on the main lines of travel. In the ancient 
kingdom of Sardinia will be found the best, but 



44 The Automobilist Abroad 

they are poor and greatly neglected around 
Naples, and, as might be expected, in Sicily. 

In Austria the roads are very variable as to 
surface and maintenance, and there are numerous 
culverts or canivaux across them. There are 
21,112 kilometres of national roads, 66,747 kilo- 
metres of provincial roads, and 87,859 of local 
roads. They average fourteen kilometres to the 
kilometre carre. 

The history of the development of the modern 
roadway is too big a subject to permit of its being 
treated here; suffice it to recall that in England 
and France, and along the Rhine, the lines of the 
twentieth-century main roads follow the Roman 
roads of classic times. 

In France, Lyons, in the mid-Rhone valley, 
was a great centre for the radiating roadways of 
Gaul. Strategically it was important then, as it 
is important now, and Roman soldiery of the 
past, as the automobilist of to-day, had here four 
great thoroughfares leading from the city. The 
first traversed the valleys of the Rhine and the 
Meuse ; the second passed by Autun, Troyes, Cha- 
lons, Reims, Soissons, Noyon, and Amiens; the 
third branched in one direction toward Saintes, 
and in another to Bordeaux; while the fourth 
dropped down the Rhone valley direct to Mar- 
seilles. 

More than thirty thousand kilometres of road- 
ways were in use throughout Gaul during the 
Roman occupation, of which the four great routes 
(vice publicce) formed perhaps four thousand. 

Of the great highways of France, the Grandes 



Roads and Routes 45 

Routes Nationales, of which all travellers by road 
have the fondest and most vivid memories, it is 
well to recall that they were furthered, if not 
fathered, by none other than Napoleon, who, for 
all he laid waste, set up institutions anew which 
more than compensated for the destructions. 

The great roadways of France, such as the 
Route de Bretagne, running due west from the 
capital, and those leading to Spain, Switzerland, 
Italy, and the Pays Bas, had their origin in the 
days of Philippe-Auguste. His predecessors had 
let the magnificently traced itineraries of the 
Romans languish and become covered with grass 
— if not actually timber-grown. 

The arrangement and classification laid down 
by Philippe-Auguste have never been changed, 
simply modified and renamed; thus the Routes 
Royales — such as followed nearly a straight line 
from Paris by the right bank of the Loire to Am- 
boise and to Nantes — became the Routes Na- 
tionales of to-day. 

Soon wheeled traffic became a thing to be con- 
sidered, and royal corteges moved about the land 
with much the same freedom and stateliness of 
the state coaches which one sees to-day in pag- 
eants, as relics of a past monarchical splendour. 

Louis XI. created the " Service des Postes ' : 
in France, which made new demands upon the 
now more numerous routes and roadways, and 
Louis XII., Francois I., Henri II., and Charles 
IX., all made numerous ordinances for the polic- 
ing and maintenance of them. 

Henri IV., and his minister Sully, built many 



46 The Automobilist Abroad 

more of these great lines of communication, and 
thus gave the first real and tangible aid to the 
commerce and agriculture of the kingdom. He 
was something of an aesthetic soul too, this Henri 
of Beam, for he was the originator of the scheme 
to make the great roadways of France tree- 
shaded boulevards, which in truth is what many 
of them are to-day. This monarch of love in- 
trigues, religious reversion, and strange oaths 
passed the first (and only, for the present is 
simply a continuance thereof) ordonnance mak- 
ing the planting of trees along the national high- 
roads compulsory on the local authorities. 

Under Louis XIV., Colbert continued the good 
work and put up the first mile-stone, or whatever 
its equivalent was in that day, measuring from 
the Parvis de Notre Dame at Paris. Some of 
these Louis XIV. homes, or stones, still exist, 
though they have, of course, been replaced 
throughout by kilometre stones. 

The foregoing tells in brief of the natural 
development of the magnificent roads of France. 
Their history does not differ greatly from the 
development of the other great European lines 
of travel, across Northern Italy to Switzerland, 
down the Rhine valley and, branching into two 
forks, through Holland and through Belgium to 
the North Sea. 

In England the main travel routes run north, 
east, south, and west from London as a radiating 
centre, and each took, in the later coaching days, 
such distinctive names as " The Portsmouth 
Road," " The Dover Road," " The Bath Road," 



Roads and Routes 



47 



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Kilometre Stones in France 



48 The Automobilist Abroad 

and " The Great North Road." Their histories 
have been written in fascinating manner, so they 
are only referred to here. 

It is in France, one may almost say, that auto- 
mobile touring begins and ends, in that it is more 
practicable and enjoyable there; and so la belle 
France continually projects itself into one's hori- 
zon when viewing the subject of automobilism. 

It may be that there are persons living to-day 
who regret the passing of the good old times 
when they travelled — most uncomfortably, be 
it remarked — by stage-coach and suffered all 
the inclemencies of bad weather en route with- 
out a word of protest but a genial grumble, 
which they sought to antidote by copious liba- 
tions of anything liquid and strong. The auto- 
mobile has changed all this. The traveller by 
automobile doesn't resort to alcoholic drinks to 
put, or keep, him in a good humour, and, when 
he sees a lumbering van or family cart making 
its way for many miles from one widely sepa- 
rated region to another, he accelerates his own 
motive power and leaves the good old ways of 
the good old days as far behind as he can, and 
recalls the words of Sidney Smith: 

" The good of other times let others state, 
I think it lucky I was born so late." 

A certain picturesqueness of travel may be 
wanting when comparing the automobile with the 
whirling coach-and-four of other days, but there 
is vastly more comfort for all concerned, and no 
one will regret the march of progress when he 






Roads and Routes 49 

considers that nothing but the means of trans- 
portation has been changed. The delightful 
prospects of hill and vale are still there, the long 
stretches of silent road and, in France and Ger- 
many, great forest routes which are as wild and 
unbroken, except for the magnificent surface of 
the roads, as they were when mediaeval travellers 
startled the deer and wild boar. You may even 
do this to-day with an automobile in more than 
one forest tract of France, and that not far from 
the great centres of population either. 

The invention of carriage-springs — the same 
which, with but little variation, we use on the 
automobile — by the wife of an apothecary in the 
Quartier de St. Antoine at Paris, in 1600, was the 
prime cause of the increased popularity of travel 
by road in France. 

In 1776, the routes of France were divided into 
four categories: 

1. Those leading from Paris to the principal 
interior cities and seaports. 

2. Those communicating directly between the 
principal cities. 

3. Those communicating directly between the 
cities and towns of one province and those of 
another. 

4. Those serving the smaller towns and bourgs. 
Those in the first class were to be 13.35 metres 

in width, the second 11.90, the third 10, the fourth 
7.90. The road makers and menders of England 
and America could not get better models than 
these. 

The advent of the automobile has brought a 



50 The Automobilist Abroad 

new factor into the matter of road making and 
mending, but certainly he would be an ignorant 
person indeed who would claim that the auto- 
mobile does a tithe of the road damage that is 
done by horse-drawn traffic. 

At a high rate of speed, however, the automo- 
bile does raise a fine sandy dust, and exposes the 
macadam. A French authority states that up to 
twenty to twenty-five kilometres an hour the au- 
tomobile does little or no harm to the roads, but 
when they increase to over fifty kilometres an 
hour they do damage the surface somewhat. Just 
what the ultimate outcome of it will be remains 
to be seen, but France is unlikely to do anything 
which will work against the interests of the auto- 
mobilist. 

In consequence of this newer and faster mode 
of travelling, it is being found that on some parts 
of the roads the convexity of the surface is too 
great, and especially at curves, where fast mo- 
tors frequently skid on the rounded surface. To 
obviate this a piece of road near the Croix d'Au- 
gas in the Orleannais has had the outer side of 
the curve raised eight centimetres above the 
centre of the road, in somewhat the same manner 
as on the curve of a railway. Since this innova- 
tion has proved highly successful and pleasing 
to the devotees of the new form of travel, it is 
likely to be further adopted. 

In the early period of the construction of 
French roads the earth formation was made hor- 
izontal, but Tresaguet, a French engineer, intro- 
duced the rounded form, or camber, and this is 



Roads and Routes 



51 



the method now almost generally adopted, both 
in France and England. Only some 14,000 kilo- 
metres of the national routes have a hand-set 
foundation, the others being what are termed 
broken-stone roads — the stone used is broken in 
pieces and laid on promiscuously, after the sys- 
tem introduced by Macadam. Some of the sec- 
ond and third class roads are constructed of 
gravel, and others of earth. 

From the official report of 1893 it appears that 
the cost of maintenance of roads in France was 
as follows: 



COST OF LABOUR AND MATERIALS 



Routes Nationales 
Routes D6partmentales 
Chemins Communication 
Chemins Vicinaux 



ANNUAL TOTAL 
COST 



22,570,300 fcs. 
14,556,860 
82,474,450 
44,211,126 



ANNUAL COST 

PER KILOMETRE 

(AV.) 



775 fcs. 
600 
423 
200 



The above is for materials and labour on the 
roadways only, and something between 33 1-3 
per cent, and 50 per cent, is added for the main- 
tenance of watercourses and sidewalks, the plant- 
ing of trees, and for general administrative ex- 
penses. 

Excepting for twenty kilometres or so around 
Paris, the vehicular traffic on the country roads 
of France does not seem to be in any way exces- 
sive. The style of vehicles in France that carry 
into the cities farm and garden produce, wood, 
stone, etc., are large wagons with wheels six to 
seven feet in diameter. These wagons are more 



52 The Automobilist Abroad 

easily hauled and naturally do less damage to 
the roads than narrow-tired, low-wheeled trucks 
or drays. The horses in Paris, and in the coun- 
try, are nearly all plain shod, with no heels or 
toes to act like a pick to break up the surface. 
Sometimes even one sees draught-horses with 
great flat, iron shoes extending out beyond the 
hoof in all directions. 

The question of the speed of the automobile on 
the roads, in France and England, as indeed 



£$ . . ®. 

«....«. o—«^»~—i - l*o YT"-' o— "1 

1 ta — J — i 



"vj| — ""***»*-- j mr y 



Profile of a French Road 

everywhere else, has been the moot point in all 
legislation that has been attempted. 

The writer thinks the French custom the best. 
You may legally go at thirty kilometres an hour, 
and no more. If you exceed this you do it at your 
own risk. If an accident happens it may go hard 
with you, but if not, all is well, and you have the 
freedom of the road in all that the term implies. 
In the towns you are often held down to ten, eight, 
or even six kilometres an hour, but that is merely 
a local regulation, for your benefit as much as for 
the safety of the public, for many a French town 
has unthought-of possibilities of danger in its 
crooked streets and unsafe crossings. 



Roads and Routes 



53 



Good roads have much to do with the pleasure 
of automobilism, and competent control and care 
of them will do much more. Where a picked bit 
of roadway has been chosen for automobile trials 
astonishing results have been obtained, as witness 
the Gordon-Bennett Cup records of the last six 
years, where the average speed per hour consist- 



AL1URE MODEREE 

PRESCRITE A 

. iflUOtHICPLES :■ 



■TOURING 'CLUB DE FRANCE 

pqsteS 
de secours 



PARIS NANTES 

270 — 



tiFLTCHE -ANGERS 

TOURSNGCtUBDE 



DELEGUE 



ATTENTION! 

ROUTE ^N.COURSj 
DE RECHARfiEMENT 




S3 



Some Touring Club Signs in France 

ently increased from thirty-eight miles to nearly 
fifty-five, and this for long distances (three hun- 
dred and fifty miles or more). 

To meet the new traffic conditions the authori- 
ties must widen the roads here and there, remove 
obstructions at corners, make encircling boule- 
vards through narrowly laid out towns, and erect 
warning signs, like the following, a great deal 
more numerously than they have as yet : 

They have very good automobile laws in France 
in spite of their anomalies. You agree to thirty- 
seven prescribed articles, and go through sundry 



54 The Automobilist Abroad 

formalities and take to the road with your auto- 
mobile. In the name of the President of the Re- 
public and the " peuple frangais," you are al- 
lowed thirty kilometres an hour in the open coun- 
try, and twenty in the towns. You can do any- 
thing you like beyond this — at your own risk, and 
so long as no accident happens nothing will be 
said, but you must pull up when you come to a 
small town where M. le Maire, in the name of his 
forty-four electors, has decreed that his village 
is dangerously laid out for fast traffic, — and 
truth to tell it often is, — and accordingly you are 
limited to a modest ten or even less. It is annoy- 
ing, of course, but if you are on a strange itiner- 
ary you had best go slow until you know what 
trouble lies ahead. 

In theory la vitesse is national in France, but 
in practice it is communal, and the barriers rise, 
in the way of staring warnings posted at each 
village-end, like the barriers across the roads in 
the times of Louis XI. 

Except in Holland, where some " private 
roads " still exist, and in certain parts of Eng- 
land, the toll-gate keeper has become almost an 
historical curiosity. It is true, however, that in 
England one does meet with annoying toll- 
bridges and gates, and in France one has equally 
annoying octroi barriers. 

One recognizes the vested proprietary rights, 
many of which, in England, are hereditary, of cer- 
tain toll-gates and bridges, but it is hard in these 
days, when franchises for the conduct of public 
services are only granted for limited periods, that 



Roads and Routes 55 

legislation, born of popular clamour, should not 
confiscate, or, better, purchase at a fair valuation, 
these " rights," and make all roads and bridges 
free to all. 

In France there are no toll-gates or bridges, or 
at least not many (the writer recalls but one, a 
bridge at La Roche-Guyon on the Seine, just 
above Vernon), but there are various state ferries 
across the Seine, the Rhone, the Saone, and the 
Loire, where a small charge is made for crossing. 
These are particularly useful on the lower Seine, 
in delightful Normandy, as there are no bridges 
below Rouen. 

In France one's chief delays on the road are 
caused by the octroi barriers at all large towns, 
though only at Paris and, for a time, at St. Ger- 
main do they tax the supplies of essence (gaso- 
line) and oil, which the automobilist carries in his 
tanks. 

The octroi taxes are onerous enough in all con- 
science, but it is a pity to annoy automobilists in 
the way the authorities do at the gates of Paris, 
and it's still worse for a touring automobile to be 
stopped at the barrier of a town like Evreux 
in Normandy, or Tarare in the Beaujolais. What- 
ever does the humble (and civil, too) guardian 
do it for, except to show his authority, and smile 
pleasantly, as he waves you off after having 
brought you to a full stop at the bottom of a 
twisting cobble-stoned, hilly street where you 
need all the energy and suppleness of your motor 
in order to reach the top. 

There are not many of these abrupt stops, out- 



56 The Automobilist Abroad 

side the large towns, and nowhere do they tax 
you on your oil or essence except at Paris — 
where you pay (alas!) nearly as much as the 
original cost. 

At Rouen the guardian comes up, looks in your 
tonneau to see if you have a fish or a partridge 
hidden away, and sends you on your way with a 
bored look, as though he disliked the business as 
much as you do. At Tours, if you come to the 
barrier just as the official has finished a good 
lunch, he simply smiles, and doesn't even stop you. 
At Marseilles you get up from your seat and let 
the official poke a bamboo stick down among your 
chambres d'air, and say nothing — provided he 
does not puncture them; if he does, you say a 
good deal, but he replies by saying that he was 
merely doing his duty, and meant no harm. 

At Nantes, at Rennes, at Orleans, and Bor- 
deaux, all of them grandes villes, every one is 
civil and apologetic, but still the procedure goes 
on just the same. 

At Lyons the octroi tax has been abolished. 
Real progress this! 

In the old coaching days road speeds fell far 
behind what they are to-day in a well-constructed 
and capable automobile, but, as they put in long 
hours on the road, they certainly did get over the 
ground in a fairly satisfactory manner. Private 
conveyances, with private horses, could not hope 
to accomplish anything like it, simply because 
there is a limit to the working powers and hours 
of the individual horse. With the old mail- 
coaches, in England, and the malle-poste and the 



Roads and Routes 57 

poste-chaise, in France, things were different, 
for at every poste, or section, was a new relay, 
and on the coach went at the same pace as be- 
fore. 

The London-Birmingham coaches in 1830 cov- 
ered the 109 miles between the two points at an 
average speed of 15.13 miles per hour, the highest 
speed being eighteen, and the lowest eleven 
miles. 

In France the speeds were a little better. From 
Lyons the old mail-coaches used to make the jour- 
ney to Paris in four days by way of Auxerre, and 
in five by Moulins, though the distance is the 
same, one hundred and twenty leagues. To-day 
the automobile, which fears not hills, takes invari- 
ably the Moulins road, and covers the distance 
between breakfast and dinner; that is, if the 
driver is a " scorcher; " and there are such in 
France. 

In 1834 there were thirteen great lines of malle- 
postes in France as follows : 

To Calais. By Clermont, Amiens, and Abbeville. 

To Lille. By Senlis, Noyon, St. Quentin, Cambrai, and Douai. 

To Mezieres. By Soissons, Reims, and Rhetel. 

To Strasbourg. By Chalons-sur-Marne, Metz, and Sarrebourg. 

To Besangon. By Troyes and Dijon. 

To Lyon. By Melun, Auxerre, Autun, and Macon. 

To Clermont-Ferrand. By Fontainebleau, Briare, Nevers, and 
Moulins. 

To Toulouse. By Orleans, Chateauroux, Limoges, and Cahors. 

To Bordeaux. By Orleans, Blois, Tours, Poitiers, and An- 
gouleme. 

To Nantes. By Chartres, Le Mans, La Fleche, and Angers. 

To Brest. By Alen<jon, Laval, Rennes, and St. Brieuc. 

To Caen. By Bonnieres, Evreux, and Lisieux. 

To Rouen. By Neuilly-sur-Seine, Pontoise, Gisors, Ecoui.s. 
and Fleury-sur-Andelle. 



58 



The Automobilist Abroad 




Roads and Routes 59 

Besides the malle-poste there was another or- 
ganization in France even more rapid. The fol- 
lowing is copied from an old advertisement: 

AVIS AU PUBLIC 

" Messageries Royales — Nouvelles Diligences 

" Le Public est averti : 

" II partira de Paris toutes les semaines, pour Dunkerque, pas- 
sant par Senlis, Compiegne, et Noyon, une diligence le lundi a 
6 heures du matin. Elle repartira de Dunkerque a Paris, le mer- 
credi a 6 heures du matin. II partira aussi dans chaque sens une 
voiture pour les gros bagages et objets fragiles, le jeudi de chaque 
semaine. 



" Les bureaux de ces diligences sont 4tablis a Paris, rue St. 

Denis, vis-a-vis les Filles-Dieu." 

From Paris to Bordeaux, 157 leagues, the Mes- 
sageries Royales made the going at an easy pace 
in five days. To-day the express-trains do it in 
six and one-half hours, and the ever-ready auto- 
mobile has knocked a half an hour off that, just 
for a record. " Tempus fugit." 

The subject of roads and roadmaking is one that 
to-day more than ever is a matter of deep concern 
to those responsible for a nation's welfare. 

It might seem, in these progressive days, that 
it was in reality a matter which might take care 
of itself, at least so far as originally well-planned 
or well-built roads were concerned. This, how- 
ever, is not the case; the railway has very nearly 
reached the limit of its efficiency (at any rate in 
thickly settled parts), and the electric roads have 
merely stepped in and completed its functions. 

It is certain that an unproved system of road 
administration or control is needed. The turn- 



60 The Automobilist Abroad 

pike or the highroad served its purpose well 
enough in coaching days as the most direct and 
quickest way between important towns. To-day, 
in many respects, conditions are changed. Cer- 
tain centres of population and commercial activity 
have progressed at the expense of less fortunate 
communities, and the one-time direct highroads 
now deviate considerably, with the result that 
there is often an unnecessary prolongation of dis- 
tance and expenditure of time. 

Examples of this sort are to be found all over 
Britain, but a great deal less frequently in 
France, where the communication is by a more 
direct line between important centres, often leav- 
ing the small and unimportant towns out of the 
itinerary altogether. 

In England, centralization or nationalization of 
the road-building authority should remedy all this. 
Cuts and deviations from existing lines, for the 
general good, would then be made without local 
jealousy or misapplied influence being brought to 
bear, and the general details of width and surface 
be carried on throughout the land, under one 
supreme power, and not, as often now is the case, 
by various local district and urban councils and 
county surveyors. 

" The Great North Road " and " The Famous 
Bath Road " vary greatly throughout their 
length as to width and excellence ; and yet popu- 
lar opinion in the south of England would seem 
to indicate that these roads, to single them out 
from among others, are idyllic, both in character 
of surface and skill of engineering, throughout 



Roads and Routes 61 

their length. This is manifestly not so. The 
" Bath Road," for example, in parts, is as flat 
and well-formed a surface as one could hope to 
find, even in France itself, but at times it degen- 
erates into a mere narrow, guttery alley, espe- 
cially in its passage through some of the Thames- 
side towns, where the surface is never of that 
excellence that it should be ; throughout its entire 
length of some hundred odd miles to Bath there 
are ever-recurring evidences of bad road-making 
and worse engineering. 

One is bound to take into consideration that it 
is the automobile, and the general increase in 
automobile traffic, that, in all countries, is caus- 
ing the wide-spread demand for improved roads. 

To illustrate the growth of the use of the auto- 
mobile on the public highway, and taking France 
as an example, the following statistics are given 
from the Journal des Debats: 

In 1900 there were taxed in France 1,399 
voitures-automobiles of more than two places, and 
955 of one or two places. In 1903 the figures had 
risen to 7,228 and 2,694 respectively. These fig- 
ures may seem astonishingly small at first glance, 
but their percentage of growth is certainly abnor- 
mally large. These voitures-automobiles, be it 
recalled, are all pleasure carriages, and displaced 
in the same time (according to the same author- 
ity) 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles. At the same 
period Paris alone claimed 1,845 voitures-automo- 
biles and 6,539 horse-drawn pleasure carriages. 

Road reformers, wherever found, should agi- 
tate for two things: the efficient maintenance of 



62 The Automobilist Abroad 

existing roads and the laying out of new and 
improved thoroughfares where needed. 

In England and America the roadways are 
under the care of so many controlling bodies that 
they have suffered greatly. In England, for ex- 
ample, there is one eighteen-mile strip of road 
which is under the control of twelve different 
highway authorities, while the " Great North 
Road " from London to Edinburgh, is, in Eng- 
land alone, subject to seventy-two separate au- 
thorities. Local jealousies, rivalry and factions, 
and the quarrels of various road authorities in- 
terfere everywhere with good roads. The great- 
est good of the greatest number is sacrificed to 
village squabbles and to the advice of the local 
squire, who " detests motor-cars," as he does 
most other signs of progress. The roads of the 
future must be under some general control. At 
present, affairs in England are pretty bad; let 
America take heed in her new provisions for 
road supervision and government. 

There is at present an almost Chinese jumble 
in the distribution of authority over roads in Eng- 
land and Wales. There are in London alone 
twenty-nine highway authorities, and 1,855 
throughout the rest of the country. 

In view of the fact that through motor traffic 
of all kinds will increase every year, it has been 
suggested that new loop roads should be con- 
structed round towns on the chief roads, private 
enterprise being enlisted by the expectation of 
improved land value. This certainly would be a 
move in the right direction. 



Roads and Routes 63 

Mile-stone reform is another thing which is 
occupying the serious attention of the road user. 
In Continental Europe this matter is pretty well 
arranged, though there is frequently a discrep- 
ancy of two, three, or even five kilometres between 
the national mile-stones (homes kilometriques) 
and the sign-boards of the various local author- 
ities and touring clubs. 

France has the best system extant of sign- 
boards and mile-stones. One finds the great 
national, departmental, and communal signs and 
stones everywhere, and at every hundred metres 
along the road are the intermediate little white- 
numbered stones, from which you may take your 
bearings almost momentarily, with never a fear 
that you are off your track. 

In addition to this the sign-boards of the Tour- 
ing Club de France, the Automobile Club de 
France, and the Association Generale Automobile 
satisfy any further demands that may be made 
by the traveller by automobile who wants to read 
as he runs. No such legible signs and warnings 
are known elsewhere. 

There is -uniformity in all the kilometre and 
department boundary stones in France; but in 
England " mile-stones " of all shapes, sizes, 
materials, and degrees of legibility are found. 

There are some curious relics in the form of 
ancient mile-stones still in use, which may please 
the antiquarian, but are of no value to the auto- 
mobilist. There is the " eightieth mile-stone on 
the Holyhead Koad " in England, which carries 
one back through two centuries of road travel; 



64 The Automobilist Abroad 

and there is a heavy old veteran of perhaps a 
thousand years, which at one time marked the 
" Voie Aurelian," as it crossed Southern Gaul. 
It is found in Provence, in the Bouches-du- Rhone, 
near Salon, and is a sight not to be missed by 
those curiously inclined. 

The question of dust is one of the chief prob- 
lems yet to be solved for the benefit of automo- 
bilists and the general public alike. A good deal 
of the ' ' dust nuisance ' ' is due to badly made and 
badly kept roads, but we must frankly admit that 
the automobile itself is often the cause. " La 
Lig"ue Contre la Poussiere, ' '' in France, has made 
some interesting experiments, with the below 
enumerated results, as related to automobile 
traffic. Road-builders and manufacturers of au- 
tomobiles alike have something here to make a 
note of. 

(1) Sharp corners and excessive road cambers lead to slip, 
and, therefore, to dnst. 

(2) More dust is raised on a rough road than on an equally 
dusty smooth road. 

(3) Watering the road moderately diminishes the dust. 

(4) The spreading on the road of crude oil, or of oil emulsions 
in water, is an important palliative. 

(5) Wood, asphalt, cobblestones, and square pavings are not 
dusty save after use by horse traffic. 

(6) Cars with smooth, boat-shaped under surfaces are less 
dusty than others. 

(7) Cars with large mud-guards and leather flaps near the road 
are more dusty. 

(8) Cars on high wheels well away from the ground are less 
dusty. 

(9) Cars with large tool-boxes at the back reaching low down 
between the back wheels are dusty. 

(10) Large car bodies are often dustier than small ones. 

(11) Blowing the exhaust near the ground increases the dust. 

(12) Cars fitted with engines having an insufficient fly-wheel 
or a non-uniform turning effort from any cause are more dusty. 



Roads and Routes 65 

(13) A car mounted on very easy springs having a large up- 
and-down play will suck up the dust with each rise and fall of 
the body on rough roads. 

(14) Front wheels — or rolling wheels — raise less dust than 
back wheels or driving wheels. 

(15) Smooth pneumatic tires are dusty. 

(16) Solid or pneumatic rubber tires are more dusty at higher 
speeds, and with high-powered engines. 

(17) Non-skid devices, such as small steel studs, etc., do not 
increase the dust. 

A writer on automobilism and roads cannot 
leave the latter subject without a reference to 
some of the obstructions and inconveniences to 
which the automobilist has to submit. If the 
automobilist proved himself a " road obstruc- 
tion ' ' like any of the following he would soon be 
banished, and the industry would suffer. 

A correspondent in the Auto, the chief Parisian 
daily devoted to automobilism, gave the following 
list of obstructions encountered in a journey of 
a thousand kilometres : 

1. Drivers having left their horses entirely unattended 75 

2. Drivers who would not make way to allow one to pass 86 

3. Drivers asleep 8 

4. Drivers not holding the reins 12 

5. Drivers in carriages, or carts, without lights at night 81 

6. Drivers stopping their horses in the middle of the road 

or at dangerous turnings 2 

7. Drivers allowing their horses to descend hills unattended 

while they walked behind 18 

8. Dogs throwing themselves in front of one 35 

9. Flocks of sheep met without guardians near by 8 

10. Cattle straying unattended 10 

11. Geese, hens, and children in the middle of the road 30 

Instead of seven sins, any of which might be 
deadly, there are eleven. Legislation must sooner 
or later protect the automobilist better than it 
does to-day. 




HOTELS 
THINGS 




In all the literature of travel, that which is 
devoted to hotels has been conspicuously neg- 
lected. Certainly a most interesting work could 
be compiled. 

Among the primitive peoples travellers were 
dependent upon the hospitality of those among 
whom they came. After this arose a species of 
hostelry, which catered for man and beast in a 
more or less crude and uncomfortable manner; 
but which, nevertheless, was a great deal better 
than depending upon the generosity and hospi- 
tality of strangers, and vastly more comfortable 
than sleeping and eating in the open. 

In the middle ages there appeared in France 
the cabaret, the gargot, the taverne, and then the 
auberge, many of which, endowed with no more 
majestic name, exist even to-day. 

Id ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL 

is a sign frequently seen along the roadways of 
France, and even in the villages and small towns. 
It costs usually ten sous a night for man, and five 

66 



Hotels and Things 67 

sous for his beast, though frequently there is 
a fluctuating price. 

The aabergiste of other days, on the routes 
most frequented, was an enterprising individual, 
if reports are to be believed. Frequently he would 
stand at his door and cry out his prices to pass- 
ers-by. " Au Cheval Blanc! On dine pour dome 
sous. Huit sous le cocker. Six Hards I'ecurie." 

With the era of the diligences there came the 
Hotels de la Poste, with vast paved courtyards, 
great stables, and meals at all hours, but the 
chambers still remained more or less primitive, 
and in truth have until a very recent date. 

There is absolutely no question but that auto- 
mobilism has brought about a great change in the 
hotel system of France. It may have had some 
slight effect elsewhere, but in France its influence 
has been enormous. The guide-books of a former 
generation did nothing but put an asterisk 
against the names of those hotels which struck the 
fancy of the compiler, and it was left to the great 
manufacturers of " pneumatiques " for automo- 
biles to carry the scheme to a considerably more 
successful issue. Michelin, in preparing his ex- 
cellent route-book, bombarded the hotel-keeper 
throughout the length and breadth of France with 
a series of questions, which he need not answer 
if he did not choose, but which, if he neglected, 
was most likely taken advantage of by his com- 
petitor. 

Given a small chef-lieu, a market-town in 
France, with two competing establishments, the 
one which was marked by the compiler of this 



68 The Automobilist Abroad 

excellent road-book as having the latest sanitary 
arrangements, with perhaps a dark room for 
photographers, stood a much better chance of the 
patronage of the automobile traveller than he 
who had merely a blank against the name of his 
house. The following selection of this appall- 
ing array of questions, used in the preparation 
of the Guide-Michelin, will explain this to the 
full : 



Is your hotel open all the year ? 

What is the price per day which the automobilist en tour may 
count on spending with you? (This is purposely noncommittal 
so far as an ironbound statement is concerned, being more par- 
ticularly for classification, and is anyway a much better system 
of classification than by a detailed price-list of dejeuner, diner, 
etc.) 

What is the price of an average room, with service and lights? 
(Be it noted that only in avowed tourist resorts, or in the case of 
very new travellers, are the ridiculous items of "service et bougie" 
— service and lights — ever charged in France.) 

Is wine included in your regular charges? (And it generally is 
except in the two above-mentioned instances.) 

Have you a sign denoting adherence or alliance to the A. G. A. ? 

Have you a sign denoting adherence or alliance to the A. C. F. ? 

Have you a sign denoting adherence or alliance to the T. C. F. ? 

Have you an arrangement with the Touring Club de France 
allowing members a discount of ten per cent. ? (Some four 
thousand country hotels of France have.) 

Have you a bath-room ? 

Have you modernized hygienic bedrooms ? 

Have you water-closets with modern plumbing? (Most im- 
portant this.) 

Have you a dark room for photographers ? 

Have you a covered garage for automobiles ? (This must be 
free of charge to travellers, for two days at least, or a mention of 
the hotel does not appear.) 

How many automobiles can you care for? 

Have you a telephone and what is its number? 

What is your telegraphic address? 

What are the chief curiosities and sights in your town? 

What interesting excursions in the neighbourhood ? 



Hotels and Things 69 

This information is afterwards compiled and 
most clearly set forth, with additional information 
as to population, railway facilities, etc. 

The annual of the Automobile Club de France 
marks with a little silhouetted knife and fork those 
establishments which deserve mention for their 
cuisine, and even marks good beds in a similar 
fashion. Clearly the makers of old-time guide- 
books must wake up, or everybody will take to 
automobiling, if only to have the right to demand 
one of these excellent guides. To be sure the 
same information might to a very considerable 
extent be included in the recognized guide-books; 
indeed Joanne's excellent series has in one or 
two instances added something of the sort in re- 
cent editions of their " Normandie " and " Pro- 
vence," but each volume deals only with some 
special locality, whereas the Guide-Michelin deals 
with the whole of France, and the house also is- 
sues another covering Belgium, Holland, and the 
Rhine country. 

The chief concern of the touring automobilist, 
after the pleasures of the road, is the choice of a 
hotel. The days when the diligences of Europe 
drew up before an old-time inn, with the sign of 
a pewter plate, an ecu d'or, a holly branch, or a 
prancing white horse, have long since disap- 
peared. The classic good cheer of other days, a 
fowl and a bottle of Beaune, a baron of beef and 
porter, or a carp and good Rhine wine have gone, 
too. The automobile traveller requires, if not a 
stronger fare, at least a more varied menu, as he 
does a more ample supply of water for washing. 



70 The Automobilist Abroad 

These quaint old inns of other days, with fine 
mullioned windows, galleried courtyards, and 
vine-trellised facades, still exist here and there, 
but they have been much modernized, else they 
would not exist at all. There is not much romance 
in the make-up of the modern traveller, at least 
so far as his own comfort is concerned, and the 
tired automobilist who has covered two hundred 
kilometres of road, between lunch and dinner, 
requires something more heroic in the way of a 
bath than can be had in a tiny porcelain basin, 
and a more comfortable place to sit in than the 
average bar-parlour, such as he finds in most 
country inns in England. 

As Sterne said: " They do things better in 
France," and the accommodation supplied the 
automobilist is there far ahead of what one gets 
elsewhere. 

The hotel demanded by the twentieth-century 
traveller need not necessarily be a palace, but it 
must be something which caters to the advancing 
needs of the time in a more efficient manner than 
the country inn of the eighteenth century, when 
the only one who travelled in comfort was he who 
thrust himself upon the hospitality of friends. 

We are living in a hygienic age, and to-day we 
are particular about things that did not in the 
least concern our forefathers. In England there 
is no public-spirited body which takes upon itself 
the task of pointing out the virtuous path to the 
country Boniface. The Automobile Club of Great 
Britain and Ireland has not succeeded very well 
with its task as yet and has not anything like the 



Hotels and Things 71 

influence of its two sister organizations in France, 
or the very efficient Touring Club Italiano. 

Hygiene does not necessarily go so far as to 
demand a doctor's certificate as to the health of 
the birds and animals which the chef presents so 
artistically in his celebrated plats du jour, and 
one need not take the journaux comiques too seri- 
ously, as once did a gouty milord, who insisted 
that his duckling Rouennais should, while alive, 
first be certificated as to the health of its bronches 
and poumons. All the same one likes to know that 
due regard is given to the proprieties and neces- 
sities of his bedroom, and to know that the kitchen 
is more or less a public apartment where one can 
see what is going on, which one can almost in- 
variably do in France, in the country, at any rate. 
Therein lies one of the great charms of the French 
hotel. 

One of the latest moves of the Automobile Club 
de France is to call attention to the mountainous 
districts of France, the Pyrenees, and the Jura, 
and to exploit them as rivals to Switzerland. 
Further, a competition among hotel-keepers has 
been started throughout France, and a prize of 
ten thousand francs is offered yearly to that hotel- 
keeper who has added most to the attractions of 
his house. The club authorities furnish expert 
advice and recommendations as to hotel reforms 
to any hotel-keeper who applies. In England the 
newly established " Eoad Club " might promote 
the interests of British motor tourists, and the 
large numbers of Americans and foreigners, by 
undertaking a similar work. 



72 The Automobilist Abroad 

To a great extent the tourist, by whatever 
means of travel, must find his hotels out for him- 
self He cannot always follow a guide-book, and 
if he does he may find that the endorsement of 
an old edition is no longer merited. 

By far the best hotel-guides for France, Bel- 
gium, and Holland, the Rhine, Switzerland, and 
Italy' are the excellent annuaires of the Automo- 
bile Clubs and Touring Clubs, and the before- 
mentioned Guide-Michelin and " Guide-Routiere 
Continental," issued by the great pneumatic tire 
companies. 

Hotel-finding abroad, for the stranger, is a 
more or less difficult process, or he makes it such. 
The crowded resorts do not give one a tithe of 
the character or local colour to be had from a stay 
in some little market-town inn of France or Ger- 
many. In the former, hotels are simply bad imi- 
tations of Parisian establishments, while the best 
are often off the beaten track in the small towns. 
The question of tipping is an ever present one 
for the European traveller. It exists in Britain 
and Continental Europe to an increasing and 
exasperating extent, and the advent of the auto- 
mobile has done nothing to lessen it. 

There is no earthly, sensible logic which should 
induce a gargon in a hotel or restaurant to think 
that because one arrives in an automobile he 
wishes to dine in a special room off of rare viands 
and drink expensive wines, but this is his common 
conception of the automobile tourist. One fights 
up or down through the scale of hotel servants, 
and does his best to allay any false ideas they 



Hotels and Things 73 

may have, including those of the hostler, who has 
done nothing for you, and expects his tip, too. 
It's an up-hill process, and the idea that every 
autornobilist is a millionaire is everywhere dying 
hard. 

The traveller demands not so much elegance as 
comfort, and, above all, fit accommodation for his 
automobile. Some sort of a light, airy, and clean 
closed garage is his right to demand, and the hotel 
that supplies this, as contrasted with the one 
that does not, gets the business, even if other 
things be not equal. 

The requirements of an automobile en tour are 
almost as numerous and varied as those of its 
owner. Hence the hotel proprietor must, if he 
values this clientele, provide something a great 
deal better than a mere outhouse, an old untidy 
stable-yard, or a lean-to. 

Small concern is it to mine host of the local inn, 
who is somewhat off the beaten track of motor- 
cars, as to what really constitutes a garage. He 
usually does not even know what the word means. 
Any roofed-over shed or shack, with doors or not, 
is what one generally has to put up with to-day, 
for housing his resplendent brassy and varnishy 
automobile. 

Once the writer remembers being turned into 
an old stable (in England), the floor of which 
was strewn with the broken bottles of a defunct 
local mineral water industry, and again into 
another, used as a carpenter's shop, the floor 
strewn with the paraphernalia and tools of the 
trade. 



74 The Automobilist Abroad 

If the English hotel-keeper (again they do 
things better on the Continent) only would dis- 
criminate to the extent of believing that there is 
nothing harmful or indecent about an automobile, 
and let it live in the coach-house like a respectable 
dog-cart or the orthodox brougham, all would be 
well, and we should save our tempers and a vast 
lot of gray matter in attempting to show a con- 
servative landlord how far he is behind the times. 

One other very important demand the automo- 
bilist makes of the hotel, and that is the possibil- 
ity of being supplied with his coffee at any time 
after five in the morning. The automobile tourist, 
not of the butterfly order, is almost invariably an 

early bird. 

Without question the Continental hotel of all 
ranks is vastly superior to similar establishments 
in Britain. The inferiority of the British inns 
may be due to tardiness and slothfulness on the 
part of the landlords, or long suffering and non- 
complaining on the part of their guests. It is 
either one or the other, or both, of these reasons, 
but the fact is the hotel-keeper, and his establish- 
ment as well, are each far inferior to those of 
Continental Europe. 

Perhaps the real reason of the conservatism of 
the British hotel-keeper is yet to be fathomed, 
but it probably starts from the fact that he does 
not travel to learn. The young Swiss serves his 
apprenticeship, and learns French, as a waiter at 
Nice, just as he learns Italian at San Remo. Ten 
years later you may find him as the manager of 
a big hotel at home. He has learned his business 



Hotels and Things 75 

by hard, disagreeable work. How many English 
hotel-keepers have imitated him? Another cause 
of backwardness in England is the " license " 
system, with its artificial augmentation of the 
value of all premises where alcoholic refreshment 
is provided. This tends to make the landlord 
look upon it as his chief, if not his sole, source of 
profit. Even if he serves meals at a fair price, he 
looks to the accompanying, or casual, drinks to 
pay him best. This results in indifferent and 
slovenly food-catering. The public bar, with its 
foul-mouthed loafers, — there seems to be an idea 
that one can talk in an English tavern as one 
would not in an English street, — is often within 
ear-shot of the dining-room. This is one of the 
great defects of the English hotel system, in all 
but the largest - towns, and even there it is not 
wholly absent. 

This is how the facts strike a foreigner, the 
Frenchman, the Dutchman, the Belgian, and the 
German, whose hotels and restaurants are, first 
of all, for quiet, ordinary guests, and only second- 
arily as places where liquid refreshment — alco- 
holic or otherwise — is served with equal alac- 
rity, but without invidious distinction. 

The old-time inns of England, and their very 
names, have a peculiar fascination for the 
stranger. Some of us who know them intimately, 
and who know what discomfort and inefficient 
catering may lurk behind such a picturesque 
nomenclature as the " Rose and Crown " or the 
11 Hawthorne Inn," have a certain disregard for 
the romance of it all. If one is an automobilist 



76 The Automobilist Abroad 

he has all the more reason to take cognizance of 
their deficiencies. 

All the same the mere mention of the old-time 
posting-houses of the " Bath Road," the " Great 
North Road " (particularly that portion between 
London and Cambridge along which Dick Turpin 
took his famous ride) have a glamour for us that 
even the automobile will not wholly extinguish. 
According to story it was at one of the many inns 
along the ' ' Great North Road ' ' that Turpin pro- 
cured a bottle of wine, which once having passed 
down the throat of his famous " Black Bess " 
enabled the rascal to escape his pursuers. The 
automobilist will be fortunate if he can find gaso- 
line along here to-day as easily as he can that 
peculiarly vile brand of beer known as " bitter." 

Buntingf ord on the ' ' North Road ' ' has an inn, 
which, in a way, is trying to cope with the new 
conditions. The landlord of the ' ' George and the 
Dragon " has come to a full realization that the 
motor-car has well-nigh suppressed all other 
forms of road traffic for pleasure, and, more or 
less incompletely, he is catering for the wants of 
motorists, as did his predecessors for the traveller 
by posting-carriage or stage-coach. This particu- 
lar landlord, though he looks like one of the old 
school, should be congratulated on a perspicuity 
which few of his confreres in England possess. 

There are two other inns which travellers on 
the ' ' North Road ' ' will recognize as they fly past 
in their automobiles, or stop for tea or a bite to 
eat, for, in spite of their devotion to the traffic 
in beer, these " North Road " inns, within a 



Hotels and Things 77 

radius of seventy-five or a hundred miles of Lon- 
don, seem more willing to furnish solid or non- 
alcoholic refreshment than most of their brethren 
elsewhere. The "Bell Inn" and the "Red, 
White, and Blue " (and the George and the 
Dragon) of the North Road in England deserve 
to linger in the memory of the automobilist, al- 
most to the exclusion of any other English inns 
of their class. 

With regard to hotel charges for all classes of 
travellers, as well in England as on the Continent, 
there is an undoubted upward tendency which the 
automobile has done absolutely nothing to allay. 
One good is coming to pass, however, and that is 
uniformity of price for the class of accommoda- 
tion offered, and (in France and most other Con- 
tinental countries) the absolute abolition of the 
charge for " lights and service," an abominable 
and outrageous practice which still lingers in Eng- 
land — and for that matter Scotland and Ireland. 

The discussion of the subject has been worn 
threadbare, and it is useless to enter further into 
it here, save to remark that since the automobile 
is bringing about so many reforms and improve- 
ments perhaps the abolition of this species of 
swindling on the part of the British hotel-keeper 
will disappear along with antiquated sanitary ar- 
rangements and uncomfortable closed-in beds. 

In France — thanks again to the indefatigable 
Touring Club de France — they have elimi- 
nated this charge for service and lights entirely, 
and one generally finds hanging behind the door 
the little card advocated by the Touring Club, 



78 



The Automobilist Abroad 



stating clearly the charge for that particular 
room and the price of the various things offered 
in the way of accommodation. This ought to be 
demanded, by law, of every hotel-keeper. Not 
every hotel in France has fallen in line, but those 



CHAMBRE N° 



Prix 



)P' i person ne. 
pi a 



peraoiuieg . .„.™„_, 



REPAS 

Petit dejeuner (dans l'appartement).. , 

— (dans la salle a manger) . 

Dejeuner a la fourch"* (id. ). 

Diner (id. ). 

DIVERS 

Pension d'un domestiqne ilojwt gourii") . 

( Panier de tiois 

Chtrttage { SewjdechaAon 

Bain de pieds 

| — de siege 

| 6 rand bain 

j Omnibus (pour la gare, par ptrsanne). 



i MM. let Voyagturs sonl pries de -couloir Men 
\ deposer leurs valeun an bureau it V hotel. 



Room Card, Advocated by the Touring 
Club de France 

that have are reaping the benefit. The automo- 
bilist is a good advertiser of what he finds en 
route that pleases him, and scores pitilessly — to 
other automobilists — everything in the nature of 
a swindle that he meets with, and they are not 
few, for in many places the automobilist is still 
considered fair game for robbery. 



Hotels and Things 79 

As to the fare offered in English inns, as com- 
pared with that of the Continental hotel, the least 
said the better; the subject has been gone over 
again and again, so it shall not be reiterated here, 
save to quote Pierre Loti on what one eats for an 
English dinner. 

" We were assembled round a horrible bill of 
fare, which would not be good enough for one of 
our humblest cook-shops. But the English are 
extraordinary folk. When I saw the reappear- 
ance, for the fourth time, of the fatal dish of three 
compartments, for badly boiled potatoes, for peas 
looking poisonously green, and for cauliflower 
drenched with a glue-like substance, I declined, 
and sighed for Poledor, who nourished my studi- 
ous youth on a dainty repast at a shilling per 
day." 

The modern tourist, and especially the tourist 
by automobile, has done more for the improved 
conduct of the wayside hotel, and even those of 
the large towns, than whole generations of trav- 
ellers of a former day. 

Once the hotel drew its income from the hiring- 
out of posting-horses, and the sale of a little food 
and much wine. As the old saying goes : ' ' Four 
horses and four bottles of port went together in 
the account of every gentleman." Travellers of 
those days, if comparatively few, were presuma- 
bly wealthy. To-day no one, save the vulgar few, 
ever cares that the innkeeper, or the servants, 
should suspect him of being wealthy. 

It's a failing of the Anglo-Saxon race, however, 
to want to be taken for bigger personages than 



80 The Automobilist Abroad 

they really are, and often enough they pay for 
the privilege. This is only natural, seeing that 
even an innkeeper is human. Charges suitable 
for a milord or a millionaire have been inflicted 
on Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons simply be- 
cause they demanded such treatment — for fear 
they would not be taken for " gentlemen." Such 
people are not numerous among real travelling 
automobilists ; they are mostly found among that 
class who spend the week-end at Brighton, or dine 
at Versailles or St. Germain or ' ' make the fete ' ' 
at Trouville. They are known instinctively by all, 
and are only tolerated by the hotel landlord for 
the money they spend. 

The French cook's " batterie de cuisine " is a 
thing which is fearfully and wonderfully dis- 
played in all the splendour of polished steel and 
copper; that is, it is frequently so displayed in 
the rather limited acquaintance which the gen- 
eral public has with the cuisine of a great hotel 
or restaurant, whether it be in Paris, London, or 
New York. 

In provincial France it is quite another thing. 
The chef-patron of a small hotel in a small town 
may be possessed of an imposing battery of pots 
and pans, but often, since he buys his patisserie 
and sweetmeats of the local pastry-cook, and since 
his guests may frequently not number a dozen 
at a time, he has no immediate use for all of his 
casseroles and marmites and plats ronds and 
sauteuses at one time, and accordingly, instead of 
being picturesquely hung about the wall in all 
their polished brilliancy, they are frequently 



Hotels and Things 81 

covered with a coating of dull wax or, more banal 
yet, enveloped in an ancient newspaper with only 
their handles protruding. It's a pity to spoil the 
romantically picturesque idea which many have 
of the French batterie de cuisine, but the before- 
mentioned fact is more often the case than not. 

Occasionally, on the tourist-track, there is a 
" show hotel," like the Hotel du Grand Cerf at 
Louviers (its catering in this case is none the 
worse for its being a " show-place," it may be 
mentioned) where all the theatrical picturesque- 
ness of the imagination may be seen. There is the 
timbered sixteenth-century house-front, the heav- 
ily beamed, low ceiling of the cuisine, the great 
open-fire chimney with its broche, and all the 
brave showing of pots and pans, brilliant with 
many scrubbings of eau de cuivre, to present quite 
the ideal picture of its kind to be seen in France 
— without leaving the highroads and searching 
out the " real thing " in the byways. 

On the other hand, in the same bustling town, 
is the Mouton d 'Argent, equally as excellent in 
its catering (perhaps more so), where the kitchen 
is about the most up-to-date thing imaginable, 
with a modern range, mechanical egg-beaters, 
etc. This last is nothing very wonderful to an 
American, but is remarkable in France, where the 
average cook usually does the work quite as 
efficiently with a two-tined fork, or something 
which greatly resembles a chop-stick. 

In the cuisine electric lights are everywhere, but 
the up-to-dateness here stops abruptly; the salle 
a manger is bare and uninviting, and the rooms 



82 The Automobilist Abroad 

above equally so, and the electric light has not 
penetrated beyond the ground floor. Instead one 
finds ranged on the mantel, above the cook-stove 
in the kitchen, a regiment of candlesticks, in 
strange contrast to the rest of the furnishings. 
Electric bells, too, are wanting, and there is still 
found the row of jangling grelots, their numbers 
half -obliterated, hanging above the great doorway 
leading to the courtyard. 

The European waiter is never possessed of that 
familiarity of speech with those he serves, which 
the American negro waiter takes for granted is 
his birthright. It's all very well to have a cheer- 
ful-countenanced waiter bobbing about behind 
one's chair, indeed it's infinitely more inspiring 
than such of the old brigade of mutton-chopped 
English waiters as still linger in some of London's 
City eating-houses, but the disposition of the 
coffee-coloured or coal-black negro to talk to you 
when you do not want to be talked to should be 
suppressed. 

The genuine French, German, or Swiss waiter 
of hotel, restaurant, or cafe is neither too cring- 
ingly servile, nor too familiar, though always keen 
and agile, and possessed of a foresight and ini- 
tiative which anticipates your every want, or at 
any rate meets it promptly, even if you ask for it 
in boarding-school French or German. 

There is a keen supervision of food products 
in France, by governmental inspection and con- 
trol, and one is certain of what he is getting when 
he buys his filet at the butcher's, and if he patron- 
izes hotels and restaurants of an approved class 



Hotels and Things 83 

he is equally sure that he is eating beef in his 
bouille and mutton in his ragout. 

Horse-meat is sold largely, and perhaps certain 
substitutes for rabbit, but you only buy horse- 
meat at a horse butcher's, so there is no decep- 
tion here. You buy horse-meat as horse-meat, 
and not as beef, in the same way that you buy 
oleomargarine as oleomargarine, and not as but- 
ter, and the French law deals hardly with the 
fraudulent seller of either. 

The law does not interfere with one's private 
likes and dislikes, and if you choose to make your 
breakfast off of oysters and Creme Chantilly — 
as more than one American has been known to do 
on the Paris boulevards — there is no law to stop 
you, as there is in Germany, if you want beer and 
fruit together. Doubtless this is a good law; it 
sounds reasonable ; but the individual should have 
sense enough to be able to select a menu from non- 
antagonistic ingredients. 

Foreigners, by which English and Americans 
mean people of Continental Europe, know vastly 
more of the art of catering to the traveller than 
do Anglo-Saxons. This is the first, last, and in- 
termediate verse of the litany of good cheer. We 
may catch up with our Latin and Teuton brothers, 
or we may not. Time will tell, if we don't expire 
from the over-eating of pie and muffins before that 
time arrives. 



CHAPTER V 

THE GRAND TOUR 

The advantages of touring by automobile are 
many: to see the country, to travel agreeably, 
to be independent of railways, and to be an oppor- 
tunist — that is to say to be able to fly off at a 
tangent of fifty or a hundred kilometres at a 
moment's notice, in order to take in some fete or 
fair, or celebration or pilgrimage. 

' Le tourisme en automobile " is growing all 
over the world, but after all it is generally only 
in or near the great cities and towns that one 
meets an automobile on the road. They hug the 
great towns and their neighbouring resorts with 
astonishing persistency. Of the one thousand au- 
tomobiles at Nice in the season it is certain that 
nine-tenths of the number that leave their ga- 
rages during the day will be found sooner or later 
on the famous " Corniche," going or coming from 
Monte Carlo, instead of discovering new tracks 
for themselves in the charming background of the 
foot-hills of the Maritime Alps. 

In England, too, the case is not so very differ- 
ent. There are a thousand " week-enders " in 
automobiles on the way to Brighton, Southsea, 
Bournemouth, Scarborough, or Blackpool to ten 

87 



88 The Automobilist Abroad 

genuine tourists, and this even though England 
and Wales and Scotland form a snug little tour- 
ing-grounds with roads nearly, if not always, ex- 
cellent, and with accommodations — of a sort — 
always close at hand. 

In Germany there seems to be more genuine 
touring, in proportion to the number of automo- 
biles in use, than elsewhere. This may not prove 
to be wholly the case, as the author judges only 
from his observations made on well-worn roads. 

Switzerland is either all touring, or not at all ; 
it is difficult to decide which. At any rate most 
of the strangers within its frontiers are tourists, 
and most of the tourists are strangers, and many 
of them take their automobiles with them in spite 
of the " feeling " lately exhibited there against 
stranger automobilists. 

Belgium and Holland, as touring-grounds for 
automobilists, do not figure to any extent. This 
is principally from the fact that they are usually, 
so far as foreign automobilists are concerned, in- 
cluded in more comprehensive itineraries. They 
might be known more intimately, to the profit of 
all who pass through them. They are distinctly 
countries for leisurely travel, for their areas are 
so restricted that the automobilist who covers two 
or three hundred kilometres in the day will hardly 
remember that he has passed through them. 

Northern Italy forms very nearly as good a 
touring-ground as France, and the Italian engi- 
neers have so refined the automobile of native 
make, and have so fostered automobilism, that 
accommodations are everywhere good, and the 



The Grand Tour 89 

tourist to-day will not lack for supplies of benzina 
and olio as he did a few years ago. 

The bulk of the automobile traffic between 
France and Italy enters through the gateway of 
the Biviera, and, taken all in all, this is by far 
the easiest, and perhaps the most picturesque, of 
routes. Alternatives are through Gap and Cuneo, 
Briancon and Susa, Moutiers and Aosta, or by the 
Swiss passes, the latter perhaps the most romantic 
of routes in spite of their difficulties and other 
objections. 

Automobiling in Spain is a thing of the future, 
and it will be a big undertaking to make the high- 
roads, to say nothing of the by-roads, suitable for 
automobile traffic. The present monarchs' enthu- 
siasm for the sport may be expected, however, to 
do wonders. The most that the average tourist 
into Spain by automobile will want to undertake 
is perhaps the run to Madrid, which is easily ac- 
complished, or to Barcelona, which is still easier, 
or to just step over the border to Feuntarabia or 
San Sebastian, if he does not think overrefined 
Biarritz will answer his purpose. 

More than one hardy traveller, before the age 
of automobiles, and even before the age of steam, 
has made ' ' the grand tour, ' ' and then come home 
and written a book about it until there seems 
hardly any need that a modern traveller should 
attempt to set down his impressions of the craggy, 
castled Ehine, the splendid desolation of Pompeii, 
or the romantic reminders still left in old Pro- 
vence to tell the story of the days of the trouba- 
dours and the " Courts of Love." 



90 The Automobilist Abroad 

It is conceivable that one can see and enjoy all 
these classic splendours from an automobile, but 
automobilists from overseas have been known 
to rush across France in an attempt to break the 
record between some Channel port and Monte 
Carlo, or dash down the Rhine and into Switzer- 
land for a few days, and so on to Rome, and ulti- 
mately Naples, where ship is taken for home in 
the western world. 

This is, at any rate, the itinerary of many a 
self-made millionaire who thinks to enjoy himself 
between strenuous intervals of international busi- 
ness affairs. It is a pity he does not go slower 
and see more. 

The real grand tour, or, as the French call it, 
the " Circuit Europeen," may well begin at Paris, 
and descend through Poitou to Biarritz, along the 
French slope of the Pyrenees, finally skirting the 
Mediterranean coast by Marseilles and Monte 
Carlo, thence to Genoa, in Italy, and north to 
Milan, finally reaching Vienna. This city is gen- 
erally considered the outpost of comfortable au- 
tomobile touring, and rightly so, for the difficulty 
of getting gasoline and oil along the route, and 
such small necessities as an automobile requires, 
continually oppresses one, and dampens his en- 
thusiasm for the beauties of nature, the fascina- 
tion of historic shrines, or the worship of art, the 
three chief things for which the most of us travel, 
unless we be mere vagabonds, and journey about 
for the sheer love of being on the move. From 
Vienna to Prague, to Breslau, to Berlin, Hanover, 
and Cologne, and finally to Paris via Reims fin- 



The Grand Tour 91 

ishes the " circuit," which for variety and excel- 
lence of the roads cannot elsewhere be equalled. 

This, or something very near to it, would be the 
very best possible course for a series of reliability 
trials, and certainly nothing quite so suitable or 
enjoyable for the participants could otherwise be 
found. It is much better than a mere pegging 
away round and round a two hundred and fifty 
kilometre circuit, as some trials and races have 
been run. In all the distance is something like 
five thousand kilometres, which easily divides it- 
self into stages of two hundred kilometres daily, 
and gives one an enjoyable twenty-five days or a 
month of travel, which, in all its illuminating 
variety, is far and away ahead of the benefits our 
forefathers derived from the box seat of a dili- 
gence or a post-chaise. 

On this trip one runs the whole gamut of the 
European climate, and eats the food of Paris, of 
the Midi, of Italy, Austria, and Germany, and 
wonders why it is that he likes the last one par- 
taken of the best. Given a faultlessly running 
automobile (and there are many to-day which can 
do the work under these conditions) and no tire 
troubles, and one could hardly improve upon the 
poetry of motion which enables one to eat up the 
long silent stretches of roadway in La Beauce or 
the Landes, to climb the gentle slopes skirting 
the Pyrenees, or the ruder ones of Northern 
Italy, until finally he makes that bee-line across 
half of Europe, from Berlin to Paris. One's im- 
pressions of places when touring en automobile 
are apt to be hazy; like those of the energetic 



92 The Automobilist Abroad 

American who, when asked if he had been to 
Rome, replied, ' ' Why, yes ; that 's where I bought 
my panama (sic) hat! " 

Such a ' ' grand tour ' ' as outlined by the ' ' Cir- 
cuit Europeen " presents a variety which it is 
impossible to equal. It is a tour which embraces 
country widely differing in characteristics — one 
which takes in both the long, broad, ribbon-like 
roads of Central France, flanked by meadows, 
orchards, and farmsteads, and lofty mountains 
from the peaks of which other peaks capped with 
glistening snow may be gazed upon, sunlit valleys 
and sparkling lakes. It is a tour which no man 
could possibly make without a good machine, and 
yet it is a tour which, with a good machine, can be 
considered easy and comparatively inexpensive. 

One does not require a car with excessive horse- 
power for the trip, though he does need a machine 
which has been carefully constructed and ad- 
justed, and above all he must guard carefully that 
his motor does not overheat, for the hills are stiff 
for the most part. 

When touring on an itinerary as varied as that 
here indicated one should have anti-skidding tires 
on the rear wheels, take descents with care, and, 
if you be the owner of a powerful machine, do not 
make that an excuse for rushing up the tortuous, 
twisting, and frightfully dangerous roads, banked 
by a cliff on one hand, and by a precipice on the 
other, which abound in all mountainous regions. 

In taking turnings on such roads also always 
keep to the right, even if this necessitates slow- 
ing down at the bends. One never knows what is 



The Grand Tour 93 

descending, and in such parts slow-moving carts 
drawn by cattle are numerous, and generally keep 
the middle of the road. Most of the automobile 
accidents which take place on mountain roads are 
due to this swishing round bends, heedless of 
what may be on the other side, and in allowing 
one's machine to gather too much speed on the 
long descents. This is gospel! There is both 
sport and pleasure to be had from such an itiner- 
ary as this, but it is a serious affair, for one has 
to have a lookout for many things that are un- 
thought of in a two hours' afternoon suburban 
promenade. The chauffeur, be he professional or 
amateur, who brings his automobile back from the 
Circuit Europeen under its own power is entitled 
to be called expert. 

As for the value to automobilism of this great 
trial one can hardly overestimate it. There is 
no place here for the freak machine or scorching 
chauffeur, such as one has found in many great 
events of the past. A great touring contest over 
such a course would be bound to have important 
results in many ways. The ordinary class of 
circuit is a very close approach to a racing-track, 
with gasoline and tire stations established at many 
points of the course. On the European Circuit 
such advantages would be out of the question, 
everything would have to be taken as it exists 
naturally. In a sense, such a competition would 
be a return to the contests organized in the early 
days of the automobile, the Paris-Bordeaux and 
Paris-Berlin races, when the driver had ever to 
be on the alert for unforeseen difficulties unknown 



94 The Automobilist Abroad 

on the racing-circuit as understood in recent 
years. 

To follow the Circuit Europeen one traverses 
France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Belgium; 
and one may readily enough, if time and inclina- 
tion permit, get also a glimpse of Spain, Switzer- 
land, and Holland. Generally the automobile 
tourist has confined his trip to France, as prop- 
erly he might, but, if he would go further afield, 
the European Circuit, as it has become classically 
known, is an itinerary vouched for as to its prac- 
ticability and interest by the allied automobile 
and touring clubs of many lands. 

France is still far in the lead in the accommo- 
dation which it offers to the automobilist, but 
Germany has made great strides of late, and the 
other frontier boundary states have naturally fol- 
lowed suit. Roads improvement in Germany has 
gone on at a wonderful rate of late, due, it is said, 
to the interest of the German emperor in the 
automobile industry, both from a sportive and a 
very practical side. 

From Paris to the Italian frontier one finds the 
roads uniformly excellent; but, as one enters 
Italy, they deteriorate somewhat, except along the 
frontiers, where, curiously enough, nations seem 
to vie with each other in a careful maintenance 
of the highroads, which is, of course, laudable. 
This is probably due to strategic military reasons, 
but so long as it benefits the automobilist he will 
not cry out for disarmament. 

The Austrian roads are fair — near Vienna 
and Prague they are quite good; but they are 



The Grand Tour 95 

dangerous with deep ditches and gullies which the 
French know as canivaux, the Austrians by some 
unpronounceable name, and the Anglo-Saxon 
as " thank- you-marms." From Prague to Bres- 
lau the roads are twisting and turning, and large 
stones jut here and there above the actual road 
level. This is a real danger, and a very consider- 
able annoyance. From Breslau to Potsdam one 
gets as dusty a bit of road travelling as he will 
find in all Europe. One side of the road only is 
stone-rolled, the other apparently being merely 
loose sand, or some variety of dust which whirls 
up in clouds and even penetrates one's tightly 
closed bags and boxes. Hanover, the home of 
Continental tires, is surrounded in every direction 
with execrable cobblestones, or whatever the Ger- 
man equivalent is — " pf laster, ' ' the writer 
thinks. Probably the makers of the excellent 
tires for automobiles have nothing to do with the 
existence of this awful pave, and perhaps if you 
accused them of it they would repair your tires 
without charge! The writer does not know. 

From Hanover to Minden the roads improve, 
and when one actually strikes the trail of Napo- 
leon he finds the roads better and better. Napo- 
leon nearly broke up Europe, or saved it — the 
critics do not agree, but he was the greatest road- 
builder since the Romans. 

Finally, crossing the Rhine at Cologne and pass- 
ing through Belgium, one enters France by the 
valley of the Meuse. 

One of the most remarkable tours was that 
undertaken in 1904 by Georges Cormier, in a tiny 



96 The Automobilist Abroad 

six horse-power De Dion Populaire. He left the 
Automobile Club de France in mid-October for 
Sens, his first stop, 101 kilometres from Paris. 
His route thenceforth was by Dijon, Les Rousses, 
and the Col de la Faucille, whence he reached 
Geneva, after crossing the Swiss frontier, in a 
torrential rain. 

From Geneva he reentered France by the Pont 
de la Caille, then to Aiguebelle and St. Jeanne de 
Maurienne, where the women wear the most theat- 
rical picturesque costumes to be seen in France. 

After passing Modane and Lanslebourg he fol- 
lowed the ascent of Mont Cenis for ten kilometres 
before he reached the summit of the pass. Within 
three kilometres he struck the snow-line, and the 
falling snow continued to the summit. Here he 
found two douaniers and two gendarmes, who ap- 
peared glad enough to have the monotony of their 
lonely vigil relieved by the advent of an automo- 
bile, quite unlooked for at this season of the year. 

The descent to Susa and the great plain of the 
Po was long and dangerous. It is sixty-two kilo- 
metres from Modane to Susa, either up-hill or 
down-hill, with the descent by far the longest. It 
is one of the most enjoyable routes between 
France and Italy. Once on the Italian side the 
whole climatic aspect of things changes. The 
towns are highly interesting whenever met with, 
and the panoramas superb, but there is a marked 
absence of that active life of the fields, of cattle 
and human labourers that one remarks in France. 

From Turin the route of this energetic little car 
passed Plaisance, crossed the Appenines between 



The Grand Tour 97 

Bologna and Florence, and so to Venice, or rather 
to Mestre, where the car was put in a garage while 
the conductor paid his respects to the Queen of 
the Adriatic. 

From Mestre the route lay by Udine, Pontebba, 
Pontafel, Villac Judenburg, and Murzzuschlag, 
through Styria to Vienna, with the roadways con- 
tinually falling off in excellence. Here are M. 
Cormier's own words: "Mais, par exemple, 
comme routes, Dieu que c'est mauvais! Malgre 
cela, j'y retournerai; le pays vaut la peine que 
Von affronte les cailloux, les ornieres, les dos 
d'dne at les derapages sur le sol mouille, comme 
je Vai trop trouve, helas! " 

Of the road from Vienna, through Moravia and 
Bohemia, the tourist wrote also feelingly. " May 
I never see those miserable countries again," he 
said. Things must have improved in the last two 
or three years, but the cause of the little De 
Dion's troubles was the frequent recurrence of 
culverts or canivaux across the road. Five hun- 
dred in one day nearly did for the little De Dion, 
or would have done so' had not it been carefully 
driven. 

From Prague the German frontier was crossed 
at Zinnwalo, a tiny hamlet well hidden on a moun- 
tain-top, beyond which is a descent of fifty kilo- 
metres to Dresden. From Dresden to Berlin the 
way lay over delightful forest roads, little given 
to traffic, and most enjoyable at any season of 
the year, unless there be snow upon the ground. 

From Berlin the route was by Magdebourg, 
Hanover, Munster, and Wesel, and Holland was 



98 The Automobilist Abroad 

entered at Beek, a little village ten kilometres 
from Nymegen. At Nymegen the Waal was 
crossed by a steam ferry-boat, and at Arnhem the 
Rhine was passed by a bridge of boats, a surviv- 
ing relic in Continental Europe still frequently to 
be found, as at Wesel and Dusseldorf in Germany, 
and even in Italy, near Ferrara on the Po. 

Utrecht came next, then Amsterdam — " a 
little tour of Holland," as the De Dion's conduc- 
tor put it. In the suburbs of the large Dutch 
towns, notably Utrecht, one makes his way 
through miles and miles of garden walls, half- 
hiding coquettish villas. The surface of the roads 
here is formed of a peculiar variety of paving 
that makes them beloved of automobilists, it being 
of small brick placed edgewise, and very agree- 
able to ride and drive upon. 

Prom Utrecht the route was more or less direct 
to Antwerp. At the Belgian frontier acquaint- 
ance was made with that horrible granite-block 
road-bed, for which Belgium is notorious. After 
Antwerp, Brussels, then forty-five kilometres of 
road even worse — if possible — than that which 
had gone before. (The Belgian chauffeurs call 
that portion of the route between Brussels and 
Gemblout a disgrace to Belgium.) The French 
frontier was gained, through Namur, at Rocroi, 
and Paris reached, via Meaux, thirty-nine days 
after the capital had previously been quitted. 

This was probably the most remarkable 
" grand tour " which had been made up to that 
time, and it was done with a little six horse-power 
car, which suffered no accidents save those that 



The Grand Tour 



99 



one is likely to meet with in an afternoon's prom- 
enade. The automobile itself weighed, with its 
baggage and accessories, practically six hundred 
kilos, and with its two passengers 760 kilos. The 
distance covered was 4,496 kilometres. 

LOFC. 




PAI3LTII 

TOl/fcING IN f RANGE 




CHAPTER I 

DOWN THROUGH TOURAINE : PARIS TO BORDEAUX 

As old residents of Paris we, like other auto- 
mobilists, had come to dread the twenty-five or 
thirty kilometres which lead from town out 
through Choisy-le-Roi and Villeneuve St. Georges, 
at which point the road begins to improve, and the 
execrable suburban Paris pavement, second to 
nothing for real vileness, except that of Belgium, 
is practically left behind, all but occasional bits 
through the towns. 

At any rate, since our automobile horse was 
mating his head off in the garage at St. Germain, 
ve decided on one bright May morning to conduct 
him forthwith by as comfortable a road as might 
be found from St. Germain around to Choisy-le- 
Roi. 

Getting across Paris is one of the dreaded 
things of life. For the traveller by train who, 
fleeing from the fogs of London, as he periodically 
does in droves from November to February of 
each year, desires to make the south-bound con- 
nection at the Gare de Lyon, it is something of 
a problem. He may board the " Ceinture," with 
a distrust the whole while that his train may not 
make it in time, or he may go by cab, provided 

103 



104 The Automobilist Abroad 

he will run the risk of some of his numerous im- 
pedimenta being left behind, for — speak it lightly 
. — the Englishman is still found who travels with 
his bath-tub, though, if he is at all progressive, 
it may be a collapsible india-rubber affair which 
you blow up like the tires of an automobile. 

For the automobilist there is the same dread 
and fear. To avoid this one has simply to make 
his way carefully from St. Germain, via Port 
Marly, or Marly-Bailly, to St. Cyr (where is 
the great military school), to Versailles, thence 
to Choisy-le-Eoi via the Route Nationale which 
passes to the south of Sceaux. The route is not, 
perhaps, the shortest, and it takes something of 
the skill of the old pathfinders to worry it out, 
but it absolutely avoids the pavements between 
St. Germain and Versailles and equally avoids the 
drive through Paris with its attendant responsi- 
bilities. 

The automobilist, once clear of Paris, has only 
to think of the open road. There will be little to 
bother him now, save care in negotiating the oft- 
times narrow, awkward turnings of an occasional 
small town where, if it is market-day, untold dis- 
aster may await him if he does not look sharp. 

On the occasion of our flight south, nothing on 
the whole journey happened to give us any con- 
cern, save at Pithiviers, where a market-wagon 
with a staid old farm-horse — who did not mean 
any harm — charged us and lifted off the right 
mud-guard, necessitating an hour's work or more 
at the blacksmith's to straighten it out again. 

At any rate, we had covered a trifle over a 



104 The Automobilist Abroad 

he will run the risk of some of his numerous im- 
pedimenta being left behind, for — speak it lightly 
. — the Englishman is still found who travels with 
his bath-tub, though, if he is at all progressive, 
it may be a collapsible india-rubber affair which 
you blow up like the tires of an automobile. 

For the automobilist there is the same dread 
and fear. To avoid this one has simply to make 
his way carefully from St. Germain, via Port 
Marly, or Marly-Bailly, to St. Cyr (where is 
the great military school), to Versailles, thence 
to Choisy-le-Eoi via the Route Nationale which 
passes to the south of Sceaux. The route is not, 
perhaps, the shortest, and it takes something of 
the skill of the old pathfinders to worry it out, 
but it absolutely avoids the pavements between 
St. (^MQM ^>.a waysi^j gqyffly avo ids the 

drive*TnTougn Faris with its attendant responsi- 

is, has only 
open road. There will be little to 
\ r e care in negotiating the oft- 
w, awkward turnings of an occasional 
where, if it is market-day, untold dis- 
■..-<} await him if he does not look sharp. 
e occasion of our flight south, nothing on 
the -mrney happened to give us any con- 

cern . Pi thiviers, where a market-wagon 

witli i farm-horse — who did not mean 

any ha; <d us and lifted off the right 

mud-gua ug an hour's work or more 

• straighten it out again. 
f covered a trifle over a 



Paris to Bordeaux 105 

hundred kilometres from Paris, and that was 
something. We lunched well at the Hotel de la 
Poste, and sent off to city-bound friends in the 
capital samples of the lark patties for which the 
town is famous. 

Nearly every town in France has its specialty; 
Pithiviers its pate des allouettes; Montelimar its 
nougat; Axat its mousserons; Perigueux its 
truffes, and Tours its rillettes. When one buys 
them away from the land of their birth he often 
buys dross, hence it is a real kindness to send 
back eatable souvenirs of one 's round, much more 
kind than would be the tawdry jugs and plates 
emblazoned in lurid colours, or white wood nap- 
kin-rings and card-cases, usually gathered in as 
souvenirs. 

It is forty-two kilometres to Orleans, one of the 
most historic and, at the same time, one of the 
most uninteresting cities in France, a place 
wholly without local dignity and distinction. Its 
hotels, cafes, and shops are only second-rate for 
a place of its rank, and the manners and customs 
of its people but weak imitations of those of Paris. 
You can get anything you may need in the auto- 
mobile line most capably attended to, and you 
can be housed and fed comfortably enough in 
either of the two leading hotels r but there is noth- 
ing inspiring or even satisfying about it, as we 
knew from a half-dozen previous occasions. 

We slept that night beneath the frowning don- 
jon walls of Beaugency's L'Ecu de Bretagne, for 
something less than six francs apiece for dinner, 
lodging, and morning coffee, and did not regret 



106 The Automobilist Abroad 

in the least the twenty-five kilometres we had put 
between us and Orleans. 

At one time it was undecided whether we should 
come on to Beaugency, or put in at Meung, the 
attraction of the latter place being, for the senti- 
mentalist, that it is the scene of the opening pages 
of Dumas 's " Trois Mousquetaires, " and, in an 
earlier day, the cradle of Jehan de Meung, the 
author of the " Roman de la Rose." No evi- 
dences of Dumas 's " Franc Meunier " remained, 
and, as there was no inn with as romantic a name 
as that at Beaugency, we kept on another seven 
kilometres. 

We had made it a rule, while on the trip, not 
to sleep in a large town when we could do other- 
wise, and that is why Orleans and Blois and Bor- 
deaux are mere guide-posts in our itinerary. 

From Beaugency to Blois is thirty odd kilo- 
metres only, along the flat, national highway, with 
glimpses of the broad, shining ribbon of the Loire 
here and there gleaming through the trees. 

Blois is the gateway of the chateaux country; 
a score of them are within a day's compass by 
road or rail; but their delights are worthy of a 
volume, so they are only suggested here. 

The chateaux of Blois, Chambord, Cheverny, 
Amboise, Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Loches, Azay 
le Rideau, Luynes, and Langeais, at any rate, 
must be included in even a hurried itinerary, and 
so we paid a hasty visit to them all in the order 
named, and renewed our acquaintance with their 
artistic charms and their historical memories of 
the days of Francois and the Renaissance. For 



Paris to. Bordeaux 107 

the tourist the chateaux country of the Loire has 
no beginning and no end. It is a sort of circular 
track encompassing both banks of the Loire, and 
is, moreover, a thing apart from any other topo- 
graphical division of France. 

Its luxuriant life, its splendidly picturesque 
historical monuments, and the appealing interest 
of its sunny landscape, throughout the length and 
breadth of old Touraine, are unique pages from a 
volume of historical and romantic lore which is 
unequalled elsewhere in all the world. 

The climate, too, combines most of the gentle 
influences of the southland, with a certain brisk- 
ness and clearness of atmosphere usually found 
in the north. 

By road the Loire valley forms a magnificent 
promenade; by rail, even, one can keep in close 
and constant touch with its whole length; while, 
if one has not the time or inclination to traverse 
its entire course, there is always the delightful 
" tour from town," by which one can leave the 
Quai d 'Orsay by the Orleans line at a comfortable 
morning hour and, before lunch-time, be in the 
midst of the splendour and plenty of Touraine 
and its chateaux. 

We made our headquarters at Blois, and again 
at Tours, for three days each, and we explored 
the chateaux country, and some other more hum- 
ble outlying regions, to our hearts' content. 

Blois is tourist-ridden; its hotels are partly of 
the tourist order, and its shopkeepers will sell 
you " American form " shoes and u best Eng- 
lish " hats. It is really too bad, for the over- 






108 The Automobilist Abroad 

powering splendours of the chateau, the quaint 
old Renaissance house-fronts, the streets of stairs, 
and the exceedingly picturesque and lively con- 
gregation of countryside peasants on a market- 
day would make it a delightful artists' sketching- 
ground were one not crowded out by " bounders " 
in bowler hats and others of the genus tripper. 

The Hotel d'Angleterre et de Chambord is good, 
well-conducted, and well-placed, but it is as un- 
sympathetically disposed an hostelry as one is 
likely to find. Just why this is so is inexplicable, 
unless it be that it is a frankly tourist hotel. 

At Tours we did much better. The praises of 
the Hotel de l'Univers are many; they have been 
sung by most latter-day travellers from Henry 
James down ; and the Automobile Club de France 
has bestowed its recommendation upon it — which 
it deserves. For all this one is not wholly at his 
ease here. We remembered that on one occasion, 
when we had descended before its hospitable 
doors, travel-worn and weary, we had been pained 
to find a sort of full-dress dinner going on where 
we expected to find an ordinary table d'hote. For 
tins reason alone we passed the hotel by, and 
hunted out the quaintly named Hotel du Crois- 
sant, in a dimly lighted little back street, indicated 
by a flaring crescent of electric lights over its 
porte-cochere. 

We drove our automobile more or less noisily 
inside the little flagged courtyard, woke up two 
dozing cats, who were lying full-length before us, 
and disturbed a round dozen of sleek French com- 
mercial travellers at their evening meal. 



Paris to. Bordeaux 109 

They treated us remarkably well at Tours 's 
Hotel du Croissant. " Follow the commis-voy- 
ageur in France and dine well (and cheaply) " 
might readily be the motto of all travellers in 
France. The bountiful fare, the local colour, the 
hearty greeting, and equally hearty farewell of 
the patronne, and the geniality of the whole per- 
sonnel gave us an exceedingly good impression 
of the contrast between the tourist hotel of Blois 
and the maison bourgeois of Tours, always to the 
advantage of the latter. 

The banks of the Loire immediately below 
Tours grow the only grape in France — perhaps 
in all the world — which is able to produce a satis- 
factory substitute for champagne. 

Vineyard after vineyard line the banks for 
miles on either side and give great crops of the 
celebrated vin mosseaux, the most of which finds 
its way to Paris, to be sold by second-rate dealers 
as the " vrai vin de champagne." There's no 
reason why it shouldn't be sold on its own merits ; 
it is quite good enough ; but commerce bows down 
to American millionaires, English dukes, and the 
German emperor, and the king of wines of to-day 
must be labelled champagne. 

From Tours to Niort is 170 kilometres, and we 
stopped not on the way except to admire some 
particularly entrancing view, to buy gasoline for 
the automobile, and for lunch at Poitiers. 

The whole aspect of things was changing ; there 
was a breath of the south already in the air ; and 
there was an unspeakable tendency on the part of 
everybody to go to sleep after the midday meal. 



110 The Automobilist Abroad 

We passed Chatellerault and its quaint old 
turreted and bastioned bridge at just the hour of 
noon, and were tempted to stop, for we had just 
heard of the latest thing in the way of a hotel 
which was brand-new, with steam heat, and hot 
and cold water, electric lights, baths, etc. Noth- 
ing was said about the bill of fare, though no 
doubt it was equally excellent. The combination 
didn't appeal, however; we were out after nov- 
elty and local colour, and so we rolled on and into 
Poitiers 's Hotel de l'Europe and lunched well in 
the most charmingly cool garden-environed din- 
ing-room that it were possible to conceive. We 
had made a wise choice, though on a hit-or-miss 
formula, and we were content. 

Here at least the dim echo of the rustle and 
bustle of Paris, which drifts down the valley of 
the Loire from Orleans to the sea, was left be- 
hind; a whole new chromatic scale was being 
built up. No one hurried or rushed about, and one 
drank a " tilleuil " after dejeuner, instead of cof- 
fee, with the result that he got sleepy forthwith. 

There are five magnificent churches at Poitiers, 
dating from Roman and mediaeval times, but we 
saw not one of them as we passed through the 
town. Again we had decided we were out after 
local manners and customs, and, for the moment, 
churches were not in the category of our demands. 

We had only faint glimmerings as to where 
Niort was, or what it stood for, but we were bound 
thither for the night. We left Poitiers in mid- 
afternoon, gaily enough, but within five kilo- 
metres we had stopped dead. The sparking of 



Paris to. Bordeaux 111 

course ; nothing else would diagnose the case ! It 
took three hours of almost constant cranking of 
the unruly iron monster before the automobile 
could be made to start again. 

Once started, the automobile ran but fitfully the 
seventy-five kilometres to Niort, the whole party, 
with fear and trembling, scarcely daring to turn 
sidewise to regard the landscape, or take an 
extra breath. There was no assistance to be had 
this side of Niort, and should the sparking ar- 
rangements go back on us again, and we were not 
able to start, there was no hope of being towed 
in at the back of a sturdy farm-horse; the dis- 
tance was too great. Once we thought we had 
nearly lost it again, but before we had actually 
lost our momentum the thing recovered itself, 
and we ran fearingly down the broad avenue into 
Niort, and asked anxiously as to whether there 
might be a grand maison des automobiles in the 
town. 

Indeed there was, and in the twinkling of an 
eye we had shunted our poor lame duck into the 
courtyard of a workshop which gave employment 
to something like seventy-five hands, all engaged 
in the manufacture of automobiles which were ex- 
ported to the ends of the earth. 

Here was help surely. Nothing could be too 
great or too small for an establishment like this 
to undertake, and so we left the machine with an 
easy heart and hunted out the excellent Hotel de 
France — the best hotel of its class between Paris 
and Bordeaux. We dined sumptuously on all the 
good things of the north and the south, to say 



112 The Automobilist Abroad 

nothing of fresh sardines from La Rochelle, not 
far distant, and we gave not a thought to the 
automobile again that night, but strolled on the 
quay by the little river Sevre-Niortaise, and 
watched the moon rise over the old chateau don- 
jon, and heard the rooks caw, and saw them circle 
and swing around its battlement in a final night- 
call before they went to rest. It was all very 
idyllic and peaceful, although Niort is, as may be 
inferred, an important centre for many things. 

We had planned to be on the road again by 
eight the next morning, but, on arrival at the 
garage, or more correctly stated, the usine, where 
we had left the automobile the night before, we 
found it the centre of a curious group who were 
speculating — and had been since six o 'clock that 
morning — as to what might be the particular 
new variety of disease that had attacked its vital 
parts so seriously that it still refused to go. 

It was twelve o'clock, high noon, before it was 
discovered — with the aid of the electrician from 
the electric light works — that two tiny ends of 
copper wire, inside the coil (which a Frenchman 
calls a bobine), had become unsoldered, and only 
when by chance they rattled into contact would 
the sparking arrangements work as they ought. 

This was something new for all concerned. 
None of us will be likely to be caught that way 
again. The cost was most moderate. It was not 
the automobile owner who paid for the experience 
this time, a thing which absolutely could not have 
happened outside of France. Pretty much the 
whole establishment had had a hand in the job, 



Paris to Bordeaux 113 

and, if the service had been paid for according to 
the time spent, it might have cost anything the 
establishment might have chosen to charge. 

Ten francs paid the bill, and we went on our 
way rejoicing, after having partaken of a lunch, 
as excellent as the dinner we had eaten the night 
before, at the Hotel de France. 

La Kochelle, the city of the Huguenots, and 
later of Richelieu, was reached just as the setting 
sun was slanting its red and gold over the pic- 
turesque old port and the Tour de Richelieu. If 
one really wants to know what it looked like, let 
him hunt up Petit jean's " Port de la Rochelle " 
in the Musee de Luxembourg at Paris. Words 
fail utterly to describe the beauty and magnifi- 
cence of this hitherto unoverworked artists' 
sketching-ground. 

We threaded our way easily enough through the 
old sentinel gateway spanning the main street, 
lined with quaint old arcaded, Spanish-looking 
houses, and drew up abreast of the somewhat 
humble-looking Hotel du Commerce, on the Place 
d'Armes, opposite the ugly little squat cathedral, 
once wedded to the haughty Richelieu himself. 

The Hotel du Commerce at La Rochelle is the 
equal of the Hotel de France at Niort, and has the 
added attraction of a glass-covered courtyard, 
where you may take your coffee and watch the 
household cats amusing themselves with the gold- 
fish in the pool of the fountain which plays cool- 
ingly in the centre. 

La Rochelle and its Hotel du Commerce are too 
good to be treated lightly or abruptly by any 



114 The Automobilist Abroad 

writer; but, for fear they may both become 
spoiled, no more shall be said here except to reit- 
erate that they are both unapproachable in quaint- 
ness, comfort, and charm by anything yet found 
by the writer in four years of almost constant 
wanderings by road and rail up and down France. 

Offshore four kilometres is the He de Re, an 
isle thirty kilometres long, where the inhabitants 
wear the picturesque coiffe and costume which 
have not become contaminated with Paris fash- 
ions. The one thing to criticize is the backward- 
ness of the lives of the good folk of the isle and 
their enormous pieds plats. 

Northward from La Rochelle is a region, almost 
within sight of the He de Re, where the women 
wear the most highly theatrical costumes to be 
seen anywhere in modern France, not even except- 
ing the peasants of Brittany. The chief distinc- 
tion of the costume is a sort of tiny twisted ban- 
danna over the head, a tight-fitting or folded fichu, 
a short ballet sort of a skirt, black stockings, and 
a gaily bordered apron and dainty, high-heeled, 
tiny shoes — in strong contrast in size and form 
to the ungainly feet of the women of the He de 
Re. 

We left La Rochelle with real regret, passed 
the fortified town of Rochefort without a stop, 
and, in something over two hours, reeled off some 
sixty-eight kilometres of sandy, marshy roadway 
to Saintes. 

Saintes is noted for many things : its antiquity, 
its religious history, its Roman remains, and the 
geniality of its toddling old dealer in sewing- 



Paris to Bordeaux 115 

machines (of American make, of course), who, as 
a " side " line, sells gasoline and oil at consider- 
ably under the prevailing rates elsewhere. Truly 
we were in the ideal touring-ground for automo- 
bilists. 

To Cognac is sixty-seven kilometres. If we had 
ever known that Cognac was the name of a town 
we had forgotten it, for we had, for the moment, 
at any rate, thought it the name of the region 
where were gathered the grapes from which 
cognac was made. 

Cognac is famous for the subtle spirit which is 
sold the world over under that name, and from 
the fact that it was the birthplace of the art-loving 
monarch, Francois Premier. 

For these two reasons, and for the bountiful 
lunch of the Hotel d 'Orleans, and incidentally for 
the very bad cognac which we got at a cafe whose 
name is really and truly forgotten, Cognac is 
writ large in our note-books. 

The house where was born Frangois Premier is 
easily found, sitting by the river's bank. To-day 
it is the counting-house of one of the great brandy 
shippers whose name is current the world over. 
Its associations have changed considerably, and 
where once the new art instincts were born, in 
the person of the gallant Frangois, is now the 
cradle of commercialism. 

The question as to what constitutes good brandy 
has ever been a favourite one among possessors 
of a little knowledge. The same class has also 
been known to state that there is no good brandy 
nowadays, no vrai cognac. This is a mistake, but 



116 The Automobilist Abroad 

perhaps a natural one, as the cognac district in 
the Charente was almost wholly devastated in 
the phylloxera ravages of half a century ago. 

Things have changed, however, and there is 
as good cognac to-day as there ever was, though 
there is undoubtedly much more poor stuff being 
sold. 

Down through the heart of the cognac region 
we sped, through Blaye to Bordeaux and all the 
busy traffic of its port. 

Bordeaux is attractive to the automobilist in 
that one enters, from any direction, by wide, 
broad avenues. It is one of the great provincial 
capitals of France, a great gateway through 
which much of the intercourse with the outside 
world goes on. 

It is not so cosmopolitan as Marseilles, nor so 
historically or architecturally interesting as 
Rouen, but it is the very ideal of an opulent and 
well-conducted city, where one does not need to 
await the arrival of the daily papers from Paris 
in order to know what has happened during the 
last round of the clock. 

Hotels? The town is full of them! You may 
put up your automobile in the garage of the 
Hotel du Chapon-Fin, along with forty others, 
and you yourself will be well cared for, according 
to city standards, for twelve or fifteen francs a 
day, — which is not dear. On the other hand, 
Bordeaux possesses second-class hotels where, all 
found, you may sleep and eat for the modest sum 
of seven francs a day. One of these is the Hotel 
Frangais, a somewhat extensive establishment in 



Paris to Bordeaux 117 

a tiny back street. It is the cheapest city hotel 
the writer has found in France. There was no 
garage at the Hotel Francais, and we were forced 
to house our machine a block or two away, where, 
for the moderate sum of two francs, you might 
leave it twenty-four hours, and get it back washed 
and rubbed down, while for another fifty centimes 
they would clean the brass work, — a nasty job 
well worth the price. Yes ! Bordeaux is pleasant 
for the automobilist ! 

Two things the stranger, who does not want to 
go too far back into antiquity, will remark upon 
at Bordeaux, the exceeding ampleness, up-to-date- 
ness, and cleanliness of the great open space in 
front of the Opera, and the imposing and beauti- 
fully laid out Place des Quinconces, with its senti- 
nel pillars and its waterside traffic of railway and 
shipping, blending into a whole which inspired 
one of the world's greatest pictures of the fever- 
ish life of modern activity, the painting by Eugene 
Boudin, known as the " Port de Bordeaux," in 
the Luxembourg. 

You may find a good low-priced hotel at Bor- 
deaux, but you pay inflated prices for your re- 
freshments in the cafes ; a cafe-glace costs fifteen 
sous and a glace a cafe twenty-five on the terrace 
of the magnificent establishment opposite the 
Opera. 



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CHAPTER II 

A LITTLE TOUR IN THE PYRENEES 

We had been touring France en automobile for 
many months — for business purposes, one might 
say, and hence had followed no schedule or itiner- 
ary, but had lingered by the way and made notes, 
and the artist made sketches, and in general we 
acquired a knowledge of France and things 
French that otherwise might not have been our lot. 

The mere name of the Pyrenees had long had 
a magic sound for us. We had seen them at a dis- 
tance, from Carcassonne and Toulouse and Pau, 
when we had made the conventional tour years 
ago, and had admired them greatly, to the dis- 
paragement of the Swiss Alps. This may be just, 
or unjust, but it is recorded here as a fact. 

To climb mountains in an automobile appealed 
to us as a sport not yet banal or overdone, and 
since Switzerland — so hospitable to most classes 
of tourists — was treating automobilists badly 
just at the time, we thought we would begin by 
making the itinerary of the " Coupe ties Pyre- 
nees; " then, if we liked it, we could try the 
French Alps in Dauphine and Savoie, delightful 
and little-known French provinces which have all 
the advantages of Switzerland and few of its dis- 

121 



122 The Automobilist Abroad 

advantages, inasmuch as the inhabitants of the 
valley hamlets and mountain towns have not 
become so commergant as their Swiss brothers. 

In August, 1905, was organized, by La Vie en 
Grand Air and La Depeche de Toulouse, a great 
contest for touring automobiles, for an award to 
be known as the " Coupe des Pyrenees/' 

As a work of art the " Coupe des Pyrenees " 
is far and away ahead of most " cups " of the 
sort. It was the work of the sculptor, Ducuing, 
and the illustration herewith will show some of 
its charm. The " coupe " itself has disappeared 
from mortal view, it having been stolen from an 
automobile exposition in London. 

The trial was intended to develop that type of 
vehicle best suited to touring, and in every way 
the event was a great success. The itinerary 
covered the lovely mountain roads from the Med- 
iterranean to the Atlantic, and was the immediate 
inspiration for the author of this book to follow 
along the same trail. It is one of the most de- 
lightful excursions to be made in all France, 
which is saying that it is one of the most delight- 
ful in all the world. 

We took our departure from Toulouse, as did 
the participants in this famous trial of the year 
before. Toulouse, the gay capital of the gay 
province of old Languedoc, has abounding attrac- 
tions for the tourist of all tastes, though it is 
seldom visited by those who, with the first swal- 
lows of spring-time, wing their way from the re- 
sorts of the Riviera to Biarritz. 

Toulouse has many historic sights and monu- 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 123 

ments, and a cuisine which is well worth a trip 
across France. What with truffles and the famous 
cassoulet and the chapons fins de Toulouse one 
forgets to speak of anything else on the menu, 
though the rest will be sufficiently marvellous. 

There are three " leading " hotels in Toulouse 
catering for the automobile tourist. According to 
report they are all equally good. We chose the 
Capoul, on the Square Lafayette, and had no 
cause to regret it. We dined sumptuously, slept 
in a great ducal sort of an apartment with a 
hygienique bedstead (a thing of brass openwork 
and iron springs) tucked away in one corner, full 
fifteen paces from the door by which one entered 
— " Un bon kilometre encore," said the gargon 
de chambre, facetiously, as he showed us up. It 
promised airiness, at any rate, and if we were 
awakened at four in the morning by the extraordi- 
narily early traffic of the city what did it matter, 
since automobiles invariably take early to the 
road. 

It's worth stating here that the cafe au lait at 
six a. m. at the Hotel Capoul was excellent. Fre- 
quently hotel coffee in the morning in France 
(at no matter what hour) is abominable. Usually 
it is warmed over from the night before. No 
wonder it is bad ! 

Toulouse delayed us not on this occasion. We 
had known it of old ; so we started a little before 
seven on a brilliant September morning, just as 
the sun was rising over the cathedral towers and 
strengthening the shadows on the tree-lined boule- 
vard which leads eastward via Castlemaudry to 



124 The Automobilist Abroad 

the walled city of Carcassonne, ninety-six kilo- 
metres away. The road-books say of this route: 

" PI. Roul. puis Ond Tr. Pitt." This freely 
translated means that the road is at first flat, then 
rolling and hilly, but very picturesque throughout. 
Castlemaudry delayed us not a moment, except to 
extricate ourselves from a troop of unbridled, 
unhaltered little donkeys being driven to the 
market-place, where there was a great sale of 
these gentle little beasts of burden. Pas mechant, 
these little donkeys, but stubborn, like their breth- 
ren elsewhere, and it was exceedingly difficult to 
force our way through two hundred of them, all 
of whom wiggled their ears at us and stood their 
ground until their guardians actually came and 
pushed them to one side. " You can often push 
a donkey when you can't pull him," they told us, 
a fact which was most apparent, though unknown 
to us previously. We arrived at Carcassonne in 
time for lunch, which we had always supposed 
was called dejeuner in France, but which we 
learned was here called diner, the evening meal 
(at the fashionable hour of eight) being known as 
souper, though in reality it is a five-course dinner. 

Carcassonne was a disappointment. Imagine a 
puffed-up little metropolis of twenty-five thousand 
souls with all the dignity that half a dozen pre- 
tentious hotels and gaudy cafes can give it; not 
very clean, nor very well laid out, nor very 
ancient-looking, nor very picturesque. Where 
was the Carcassonne of the frowning ramparts, of 
the gem of a Gothic church, and of the romance 
and history of which all school-books are filled? 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 125 

" Oh! You mean la Cite/' said the buxoni host- 
ess of our hotel. (They are always buxoni host- 
esses in books, but this was one in reality.) Well, 
yes, we did mean la Cite, if by that name she re- 
ferred to the old walled town of Carcassonne, 
la ville la plus curieuse de France, un monument 
unique au mond. 

It is but a short kilometre to reach la Cite from 




%uSeti^m^caM 



the Ville Basse, as the modern city of Carcassonne 
is known. Once within the double row of walls, 
flanked by more than fifty towers, any precon- 
ceived ideas that one may have had of what it 
might be like will be dispelled in air. It is the 
most stupendously theatrical thing yet on top of 
earth, unless it be the sad and dismal Pompeii or 
poor rent Les Baux, in Provence. 

The history of this wonder-work cannot be 
compressed into a few lines. One can merely em- 



126 The Automobilist Abroad 

phasize its marvellous attractions, so that those 
who are in the neighbourhood may go and study 
it all out for themselves. It will be worth whole 
volumes on history and architecture for the ear- 
nest student to see these things. Among all the 
authorities who have proclaimed the magnificent 
attractions of Carcassonne the words of Viollet-le- 
Duc are as convincing as any. He says : ' * In no 
part of Europe is there anything so formidable, 
nor at the same time so complete, as the eleventh, 
twelfth, and thirteenth century fortifications of 
Carcassonne." 

We stayed a full day at Carcassonne, and 
reached the frowning battlements of the Eglise 
St. Nazaire, at Beziers, at just two by the clock. 
This is the hour when all the commis-voyageurs, 
who may have taken lunch at the Hotel du Nord, 
are dozing over their cafe and petites verres, and 
the patron and patronne of the hotel are making 
preparations for their early afternoon siesta, an 
attribute of all the Midi of France, as it is of 
Spain. 

Nothing loath, the kitchen staff, spurred on by 
the patron (all thoughts of his siesta having van- 
ished), turned out a most excellent lunch, hors 
d'ceuvres, fresh sardines, omelette, cotelette 
d'agneau with pommes paille, delicious grapes, 
and all you wish of the red or white vin du pays. 
All for the absurd sum (considering the trouble 
they were put to) of three francs each. No 
" doing " the automobilist here; let other trav- 
ellers make a note of the name ! 

Beziers is altogether one of the most remark- 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 127 

ably disposed large towns of the south of France. 
Its storied past is lurid enough to please the 
most bloodthirsty, as is recalled by the history 
of its fortress-church of St. Nazaire, now the 
cathedral. For the rest the reader must hunt it 
out in his guide-book. "We were doing no light- 
ning tour, but we were of a mind to sleep that 
night at Perpignan, approximately a hundred 
kilometres farther on. 

Southward our road turned again, through Nar- 
bonne, which, both from its history and from its 
present-day importance, stands out as one of the 
well-remembered spots in one's itinerary of 
France. It is full of local colour; its bridge of 
houses over its river is the delight of the artistic ; 
its Hotel de Ville and its cathedral are wonders of 
architectural art; and, altogether, as the ancient 
capital of an ancient province, one wonders that 
a seventeenth-century traveller had the right to 
call it " cette vilaine ville de Narbonne." 

All the way to Perpignan the roads were ter- 
rifically bad, being cut up into great dusty ruts 
by many great carts and drays hauling wine-pipes 
to the railway stations. The traffic is enormous, 
for it is the wines of Roussillon that are shipped 
all over France for blending with and fortify- 
ing the weaker vintages, even those of the Gi- 
ronde. 

Dusty in dry weather, and chalky mud in wet, 
are the characteristic faults of this hundred kilo- 
metres or more of Herault roadway which one 
must cross to gain the shadow of the Pyrenees. 
There seems to be no help for it unless cobble- 



128 The Automobilist Abroad 

stones were to be put down, which would be a cure 
worse than the disease. 

Perpignan is the most entrancing city between 
Marseilles and Barcelona. It has many of the 
characteristics of both, though of only thirty thou- 
sand inhabitants. The old fortifications, which 
once gave it an aspect of medievalism, are now 
(by decree of 1903) being torn down, and only the 
quaintly picturesque Castillet remains. The rest 
are — at the present writing — a mere mass of 
crumbled bricks and mortar, and a real blemish 
to an otherwise exceedingly attractive, gay little 
city. The automobile garages are all side by side 
on a new-made street, on the site of one line of 
the old fortifications, and are suitable enough 
when found, but no directions which were given 
us enabled us to house our machine inside of 
half an hour's time after we had entered the 
town. Our hotel, unfortunately, was one of the 
few that did not have a garage as an adjunct 
of the establishment. In other respects the Hotel 
de la Poste was a marvel of up-to-dateness. The 
sleeping-rooms were of that distinction known in 
France as hygienique, and the stairways and 
walls were fire-proof, or looked it. One dined in 
a great first-floor apartment with a marble floor, 
and dined well, and there was ice for those who 
wanted it. (The Americans did, you may be 
sure.) 

Perpignan is possessed of much history, much 
character, and much local colour of the tone which 
artists love, and above all a certain gaiety and 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 129 

brilliancy which one usually associates only with 
Spain. 

There is what might be called a street of cafes 
at Perpignan, not far from the Castillet. They 
are great, splendid establishments, with wide, 
overhung, awninged terraces, and potted plants 
and electric lights and gold and tinsel, and mixed 
drinks and ices and sorbets, and all the epicurean 
cold things which one may find in the best estab- 
lishment in Paris. These cafes are side by side 
and opposite each other, and are as typical of the 
life of the town as is the Rambla typical of Barce- 
lona, or the Cannebiere of Marseilles. They are 
dull enough places in the daytime, but with the 
hour of the aperitif, which may be anywhere 
between five and eight in the afternoon, they 
wake up a bit, then slumber until nine or nine- 
thirty, when gaiety descends with all its forces 
until any hour you like in the morning. They 
won't think of such a thing as turning the lights 
out on you in the cafes of Perpignan. 

From Perpignan we turned boldly into the cleft 
road through the valley of the Tet, via Prades 
and Mont Louis to Bourg-Madame, the frontier 
town toward Spain, and the only decent route 
for entering Spain by automobile via the Medi- 
terranean gateway. 

Bourg-Madame is marked on most maps, but 
it is all but unknown of itself; no one thinks of 
going there unless he be touring the Pyrenees, or 
visiting Andorra, one of the unspoiled corners of 
Europe, as quaint and unworldly to-day as it ever 
was; a tiny republic of very, very few square 



130 The Automobilist Abroad 

kilometres, whose largest city or town, or what- 
ever you choose to call it, has but five hundred 
inhabitants. 

If one is swinging round the Pyrenean circle 
he goes on to Porte, where, at the Auberge 
Michette, he will learn all that is needful for pene- 
trating into the unknown darkest spot in Europe. 
We thought to do the journey " en auto," but 
on arrival at Porte learned it was not to be 
thought of. A sure-footed little Pyrenean donkey 
or mule was the only pathfinder used to the twist- 
ings and turnings and blind paths of this little 
mountain republic, where the people speak Span- 
ish, and religion and law are administrated by the 
French and Spanish authorities in turn. 

It's a week's travel properly to visit Andorra 
and view all its wild unworldliness, so the trip is 
here only suggested. 

We took up our route again, crossing the Col 
de Puymorans (1,781 metres), and dropped down 
on Hospitalet, which also is printed in large 
black letters on the maps, but which contains only 
148 inhabitants, unless there have been some 
births and no deaths since this was written. 

From Hospitalet we were going down, down, 
down all of the time, the valley road of the Ariege, 
dropping with remarkable precipitation. 

In eighteen kilometres we were at Aix-les- 
Thermes. The guide-books call it " une jolie 
petite ville," and no one will dispute it, though 
it had no charms for us ; we were more interested 
in routes and roads than in mere watering-places, 
and so, beyond a stop for gasoline for the motor, 




&3 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 131 

not having been able to get any for the last fifty 
kilometres, still following the valley of the Ariege, 
we arrived at Foix for lunch, at the most excellent 
Hotel Benoit, just as the ice was being brought 
on the table and the hors d'ceuvres were being por- 
tioned out. 

Taken all in all, Foix was one of the most de- 
lightful towns we found in all the Pyrenean itin- 
erary. It is quite the most daintily and pictur- 
esquely environed town imaginable, its triple-tow- 
ered chateau and its rocher looming high above 
all, and sounding a dominant note which carries 
one back to the days when Gaston Phoebus was the 
seigneur of Foix. 

We planned to spend the night at the Hotel de 
France at St. Girons, for it was marked down in 
the Guide-Michelin as being fitted with those 
modern refinements of travel which most of us 
appreciate, and there was furthermore a garage 
and a fosse, or inspection pit. We had need of the 
latter, for something was going wrong beneath 
the body of our machine which manifestly re- 
quired being attended to without delay. 

We took the long way around, twenty kilometres 
more out of our direct road, for novelty of driv- 
ing our automobile through the Grotto of Mas- 
D'Azil. We had been through grottoes before, 
the Grotte de Han in the north of France, the 
caves where they ripen Rochefort cheeses, the 
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and some others, 
but we had never expected to drive an automobile 
through one. The Grotte de Mas-D'Azil is much 
like other dark, damp holes elsewhere, and the 



132 The Automobilist Abroad 

only novelty is the magnificent road which pierces 
it. The sensation of travelling over this road is 
most weird, and it was well worth the trouble of 
making the experiment. 

From St. Girons to St. Gaudens and Montrejeau 
is sixty odd kilometres. Nothing happened on 
the way except that the road was literally 
thronged with great slow-moving ox-teams trans- 
porting great logs down the mountainside to the 
sawmills in the lower valley. 

Montrejeau was a surprise and a disappoint- 
ment. It was a surprise that we should find such 
a winsome little hill-town, and such a very ex- 
cellent hotel as was the Grand Hotel du Pare, 
which takes its name from a tiny hanging garden 
at the rear; but we were disappointed in that for 
a mortal half-hour we tried to make our usually 
willing automobile climb up on to the plateau 
upon which the town sits. Three separate roads 
we tried, each three separate times, but climb the 
machine would not. No one knew why, the writer 
least of all, and he had been chauffeur and driver 
of that automobile for many long months, and 
had never found a hill, great or small, that it 
would not climb. Automobiles are capricious 
things, like women, and sometimes they will and 
sometimes they will not. At last, after the natives 
had had sufficient amusement, and had told us that 
they had seen many an automobile party go with- 
out lunch because they could not get up that steep 
little kilometre, we found a sort of back-door 
entrance which looked easy, and we went up like 
the proverbial bird. It was not the main road 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 133 

into town, and it took some finding. The writer 
hopes that others who pass this way will be as 
successful. Montrejeau, with its three steep 
streets, its excellent hotel (when you finally got 
in touch with it), its old-world market-house, and 
its trim little cafe-bordered square, will be long 
remembered. 

We debated long as to whether we should drop 
down to Luchon, and come around by Bagnerres- 
de-Bigorre or not, but since they were likely to be 
full of " five-o '-dockers " at this season we 
thought the better of it, and left them entirely out 
of our itinerary. When one wants it he can get 
the same sort of conventionality at Ermenonville, 
and need not go so far afield to find it. 

We arrived at Tarbes, at the Hotel des Am- 
bassadeurs, late on Sunday afternoon. The 
name of the hotel augured well for good cheer, 
and on the whole we found it satisfactory enough. 
One of its most appealing features is the fact that 
the kitchens and the garage were once a convent. 
It has undergone a considerable change since then, 
but it lent a sort of glamour to things to know that 
you were stabling your automobile in such a place. 

Tarbes is a great busy, overgrown, unlovely 
big town, which flounders under the questionable 
dignities of being a station of an army corps and 
a prefecture. Bureaucracy and Officialdom are 
writ large all over everything, and a poor mortal 
without a handle to his name, or a ribbon in his 
buttonhole, is looked upon as a sort of outcast 
when he enters a cafe, and accordingly he waits 
a long time to be served, 



134 The Automobilist Abroad 

We got out of Tarbes at a tres bonne heure the 
next morning without a regret, headed for Pau. 
All of us had always had an affection for Pau, 
because, in a way, we admired old Henri Quatre, 
even his rascality. 

We found Pau, too, a great, overgrown, fussy 
town, a bit more delightfully environed than 
Tarbes, but still not at all what we had pictured 
it. We knew it to be a tourist resort, but we were 
hardly prepared for the tea-shops and the 
' ' bars ' ' and the papers — in English and 
" American," as a local newsdealer told us when 
we went to him to buy the inevitable picture post- 
cards. 

We found out, too, that Pau has long held a 
unique position as the leading hunting centre on 
the Continent. It costs sixty francs a day for the 
hire of a saddle-horse, and from 350 francs to 
four hundred francs for the month — certainly 
rather dear. There are, as a rule, from thirty to 
forty hunters available for hire each year, but 
many of them are reserved by old stagers. Of 
privately owned horses following the hunt, the 
number would usually somewhat exceed two hun- 
dred. The hounds meet three times a week, and 
the municipality of Pau shows its appreciation 
of the good that hunting does for the Pyrenees 
resort by voting a subsidy of five thousand francs. 

What history and romance there is about Pau 
is pretty well blotted out by twentieth-century 
snobbism, it would seem. 

One learns that Pau was the seat of a chateau 
of the princes of Beam as early as the tenth cen- 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 135 

tury. Its great splendour and importance only 
came with the establishment here of the residence 
of Gaston IV., Comte de Foix, the usurper of the 
throne of Navarre in 1464. In his train came a 
parliament, a university, an academy, and a mint. 
Finally came the birth of Henri Quatre, and one 
may yet see the great turtle-shell used by the 
afterwards gay monarch for a cradle. These were 
gay times for Pau, and the same gaiety, though 
of a forced nature, exists to-day with the throngs 
of English and Americans who are trying hard 
to make of it a social resort. May they not suc- 
ceed. One thing they have done is to raise prices 
for everything to everybody. This is bad enough 
to begin with, and so with this parting observa- 
tion Pau is crossed off the list. 

There are eight highroads which cross the fron- 
tier passes from France into Spain, and two lines 
of railway, one along the border of the Atlantic 
and Hendaye, and the other following the Medi- 
terranean coast to Barcelona. 

"II n'y a plus de Pyrenees," we were told as 
we were leaving Pau. It seemed that news had 
just been received that in fourteen hours a Span- 
ish aeronaut had covered the 730 kilometres from 
Pau to Grenada " comme les oiseaax." Truly, 
after this, there are no more frontiers. 

After Pau our route led to Mauleon (seventy- 
two kilometres) via Oloron, straight across 
Beam, where the peasants are still of that pic- 
turesque mien which one so seldom sees out of 
the comic-opera chorus. One reads that the 
Bearnais are " irascible, jealous, and spirituel." 



136 The Automobilist Abroad 

This is some one's opinion of times long passed, 
but certainly we found nothing of the kind ; noth- 
ing indeed different from all the folk of the South 
who dawdle at their work and spend most of their 
leisure energetically dancing or eating. 

Mauleon, known locally as Mauleon-Licharre to 
distinguish it from Mauleon-Barousse, is the 
douane station for entering France from Spain 
(Pampelune) via St. Jean-Pied-de-Port and St. 
Beat, neither of the routes much used, and not at 
all by automobiles. 

A typical little mountain town, Mauleon is the 
chef-lieu of the Arrondissement, and the ancient 
capital of the Vicomte de Soule. It has an excel- 
lent hotel, allied to the Touring Club de France 
(Hotel Saubidet), where one dines well off the 
fare of the country with no imitation Parisian 
dishes. There is a sort of a historical monument 
here, the Chateau de Mauleon (Malo-Leone — 
Mauvais Lion — Wicked Lion: the reader may 
take his choice) of the fifteenth century, which 
surrounds itself accommodatingly with a legend 
which the native will tell you, if asked. 

There is no great accommodation for automo- 
biles at Mauleon, and one can only buy oil and 
gasoline by going to a man named Etcheberrigary 
for it. His address is not given, but any one will 
tell you where he lives. They may not recognize 
your pronunciation, but they will recognize your 
dilemma at once and point the way forthwith. 

It was forty-one kilometres to St. Jean-Pied-de- 
Port, over an " all-up-and-down-hill " road, if 
there ever was one — up out of one river valley 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 137 

and down into another all the way until we struck 
the road by the banks of the Nive and approached 
the town. 

St. Jean-Pied-de-Port takes its name from its 
proximity to one of the Franco-Spanish gate- 
ways through the Pyrenees. 

It is in danger of becoming a resort, since the 
guide-books already announce it as a station cli- 
matiqtie. Its Basque name of Donajouana, or Don 
Ilban-Garici, ought, however, to stop any great 
throng from coming. 

It lies directly at the foot of the Col de Ronce- 
valles leading into Spain (1,057 metres). The 
pass has ever been celebrated in the annals of 
war, from the days of the Paladin Roland to 
those of Marechal Soult's attack on the English 
at Pampelune. 

Considering that St. Jean-Pied-de-Port boasts 
of only fourteen hundred inhabitants, and is al- 
most hidden in the Pyrenean fastness, one does 
very well within its walls. There is a railway to 
Bayonne, the post, telegraph, a pharmacy, and a 
Red Cross station, and the wants of the automo- 
bilist are attended to sufficiently well by the local 
locksmith. The Hotel Central, on the Place du 
Marche, is vouched for by the Touring Club. It 
has a salle des bains and other useful accessories 
often wanting in more pretentious establishments, 
a dark room for camera fiends, a pit for automo- 
biles, and electric lights. For all this you pay 
six francs a day. " Pas chert " 

Bayonne, through the Basque country, is fifty 



138 The Automobilist Abroad 

odd kilometres distant, a gentle descent all the 
way, down the valley of the Nive. 

The Basques are a picturesque and lovable 
people, and they have kept their characteristics 
and customs bright and shining through many 
centuries of change round about them. 

They love the dance, all kinds of agile games 
like the jeu de paume and pelota, and will dance 
for three days at a fete with a passion which does 
not tire. Even to-day the Basque thinks more 
of a local fete than he does of anything else, and 
will journey fifteen or twenty kilometres afoot — 
if he can't get a ride — to form a part of some 
religious procession or a tournee de paume. 

Cambo, midway between St. Jean-Pied-de-Port 
and Bayonne, is a tiny spring and bath resort try- 
ing hard to be fashionable. There are many villas 
near-by of wealthy " Basques-Americains, " from 
the Argentine. 

The Basques, at least the Basques-Frangais, 
are a disappearing factor in the population of 
Europe. It is said there are more Basques in the 
Argentine Republic than in the Republic of 
France, and all because of the alienation of the 
Basques by Louis XIV. when he married Marie- 
Therese and her 500,000 ecus of dot. Since 1659 
the real Basque, he or she of the fine teeth, has 
been growing beautifully less in numbers, both in 
France and in Spain. 

A certain fillip was given to Cambo by the re- 
treat here of Edward Rostand, the author of 
" Cyrano " and " L'Aiglon." In his wake fol- 
lowed litterateurs and journalists, and the fame 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 139 

of the hitherto unworldly little spot — sheltered 
from all the winds that blow — was bruited 
abroad, and the Touring Club de France erected 
a pavilion; thus all at once Cambo became a 
" resort," in all that the name implies. 

A mecanicien has not yet come to care for the 
automobilist in trouble, but the locksmith (serrur- 
rier) will do what he can and charge you little for 
it. Gasoline is high-priced, fifty sous a bidon. 

Bayonne, with its tradition, its present-day 
prosperity, and its altogether charming situation, 
awaited us twenty odd kilometres away, and we 
descended upon its excellent, but badly named, 
Grand Hotel just at nightfall. There's another 
more picturesquely named near by, and no doubt 
as excellent, called the Panier-Fleuri. We would 
much rather have stopped at the latter, — if only 
on account of its name, — but there was no accom- 
modation for the automobile. M. Landlord, brace 
up! 

Bayonne is a fortress of the first class, and 
commands the western gateway into Spain. Its 
brilliant aspect, its cosmopolitanism, and its 
storied past appealed to us more than did the 
attractions of its more fastidious neighbour, Biar- 
ritz. One can see a better bull-fight at Bayonne 
than he can at Biarritz, where his sport must con- 
sist principally of those varieties of gambling 
games announced by European hotel-keepers as 
having " all the diversions of Monte Carlo." 
Bull-fighting is forbidden in France, but more or 
less mysteriously it comes off now and then. We 
did not see anything of the sort at Bayonne, but 



140 The Automobilist Abroad 

we had many times at Aries, and Nimes, and knew 
well that when the southern Frenchman sets about 
to provide a gory spectacle he can give it quite 
as rosy a hue as his Spanish brother. 

Biarritz called us the next day, and, not wish- 
ing to be taken for dukes, or millionaires, or 
chauffeurs and their friends out on a holiday, 
we left the automobile en garage, and covered the 
seven kilometres by the bumble tramway. Be 
wise, and don't take your automobile to a resort 
like Biarritz unless you want to pay. 

It's a long way from the Pont Saint-Esprit at 
Bayonne to the plage at Biarritz, in manners and 
customs, at any rate, and the seeker after real 
local colour will find more of it at Bayonne than 
he will at its seaside neighbour, where all is tinged 
with Paris, St. Petersburg, and London. 

The Empress Eugenie, or perhaps Napoleon 
III., " made " Biarritz when he built the first 
villa in the little Basque fishing-village, which had 
hitherto known neither courts nor coronets. 
There's no doubt about it; Biarritz is a fine re- 
sort of its class, as are Monte Carlo and Ostende. 
One can study human nature at all three, if that 
is what he is out for; so, too, he can — the same 
sort — on Paris 's boulevards. 

The month of October is time for the gathering 
of the fashionables and elegants of all capitals at 
Biarritz. All the world bathes together in the 
warm waters of the Plage des Basques, and the 
sublime contrast of the Pyrenees on one hand, 
and the open sea and sky on the other, give a 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 141 

panorama of grandeur that few of its competitors 
have. 

The visitors to Biarritz daily augment in num- 
bers, and, since it had been a sort of neutral 
trysting-ground for the King and Queen of Spain 
before their marriage, and since the seal of his 
approval has been given to it by Edward VII. of 
England (to the great disconcern of the Riviera 
hotel-keepers), it bids fair to become even more 
popular. 

From Bayonne to the Spanish frontier it is 
thirty kilometres by the road which runs through 
the Basque country and through St. Jean-de-Luz, 
a delightful little seaside town which has long 
been a ' ' resort ' ' of the mildly homoeopathic kind, 
and which, let us all hope, will never degenerate 
into another Nice, or Cannes, or Menton. The 
great event of its historic past was the marriage 
here of Louis XIV. with the Infanta Marie- 
Therese on the sixth of June, 1660, but to-day 
everything (in the minds of the inhabitants) dates 
from the arrival of the increasing shoals of vis- 
itors from " brumeuse Angleterre " in the first 
days of November, with the added hope that this 
year's visitors will exceed in numbers those of the 
last — which they probably will. 

Those who know not St. Jean-de-Luz and its 
charms had best hurry up before they entirely 
disappear. The Automobile Club de France en- 
dorses the Hotel d 'Angleterre of St. Jean as to 
its beds and its table, and also notes the fact that 
you may count on spending anything you like from 
thirteen francs a day upward for your accom- 



142 The Automobilist Abroad 

modation. The Touring Club de France swears 
by the Hotel Terminus-Plage (equally unfortu- 
nately named), and here you will get off for ten 
francs or so per day, and probably be cared for 
quite as well as at the other. In any case they 
both possess a salle des bains and a shelter for 
your automobile. 

We stopped only for lunch, and found it excel- 
lent, at the Hotel de la Poste, with vin compris — 
which is not the case at the great hotels. En 
passant, let the writer say that the average 
" tourist " (not the genuine vagabond traveller) 
will not drink the vin de table, but prefers the 
same thing — at a supplementary price — for the 
pleasure of seeing the cork drawn before his eyes. 
The " grands hotels " of the resorts recognize 
this and cater for the tourist accordingly. 

We were bound for Fontarabia that night, just 
over the Spanish border. The Spanish know it as 
Feuntarabia, and the Basques as Ondarriba. For 
this reason one's pronunciation is likely to be 
understood, because no two persons pronounce 
it exactly alike, and the natives' comprehensions 
have been trained in a good school. 

Fontarabia is gay, is ancient, and is very for- 
eign to anything in France, even bordering upon 
the Spanish frontier. We left the automobile at 
Hendaye, not wishing to put up with the customs 
duties of eighteen francs a hundred kilos for the 
motor, and a thousand francs for the carrosserie, 
for the privilege of riding twenty kilometres out 
and back over a sandy, dreary road. 

We dined and slept that night at a little Span- 



A Little Tour in the Pyrenees 143 

ish hotel half built out over the sea, Concha by 
name, and left the Grand Hotel de Palais Mira- 
mar to those who like grand hotels. We lingered 
a fortnight at Fontarabia, and did much that 
many tourists did not. One should see Fontara- 
bia and find out its delights for oneself. There 
is a quaintness and unworldliness about its old 
streets and wharves, which is indescribable in 
print ; there is a wonderfully impressive expanse 
of sea and sky on the Bay of Bidassoa, a couple of 
kilometres away, and all sorts and conditions of 
men may find an occupation here for any passing 
mood they may have. 

We just missed the great fete of the eighth of 
September, when processions, and bull-fights, and 
all the movement of the sacred and profane re- 
joicings of the Latins yearly astonish the more 
phlegmatic northerner. 

Another great fete is that of Vendredi-Saint 
(Good Friday). Either one or the other should 
be seen by all who may be in these parts at these 
times. 

Near by, in the middle of the swift-flowing cur- 
rent of the Bidassoa, is the historically celebrated 
He des Faisans, on which the conferences were 
held between the French minister Mazarin and 
the Spanish Don Louis de Haro, which led to the 
famous Treaty of the Pyrenees, 1659, and the 
marriage of Louis XIV. with the daughter of 
Philip IV. The representative of each sovereign 
advanced from his own territory, by a temporary 
bridge, to this bit of neutral ground, which then 
reached nearly up to the present bridge. The 



144 The Automobilist Abroad 

piles which supported the cardinal's pavilion 
were visible not many years ago. The death of 
Velasquez, the painter, was caused by his exer- 
tions in superintending these constructions; 
duties more fitting to an upholsterer than a 
painter. 

We finished our tour of the Pyrenees at Fonta- 
rabia, having followed along the shadow of these 
great frontier mountains their entire length ; not 
wholly unknown ground, perhaps, but for the most 
part entirely unspoiled, and, as a touring-ground 
for the automobilist, without a peer. 




C ^JVgrUBDOC 




145 



CHAPTER III 

IN LANGUEDOC AND OLD PROVENCE 

The dim purple curtain of the Pyrenees had 
been drawn behind us, and we were passing from 
the patois of Languedoc to the patois of Provence, 
where the peasants say pardie in place of pardou 
when an exclamation of surprise comes from their 
lips. 

Cast your eyes over the map of ancient 
France, and you will distinguish plainly the lines 
of demarcation between the old political divisions 
which, in truth, the traveller by road may find to 
exist even to-day, in the manners and customs 
of the people at least. 

Unconsciously we drew away from the sleepy 
indolence of Perpignan and Roussillon, and before 
we knew it had passed Narbonne, and on through 
Beziers to Agde, where we proposed stopping for 
the night. 

Quite as Spanish-looking as Perpignan, Agde 
was the very antithesis of the gay and frivolous 
Catalan city. The aspect of its purple-brown 
architecture, the bridge-piers crossing the He- 
rault, and the very pavements themselves were 
a colour-scheme quite unlike anything we had seen 
elsewhere. Brilliant and warm as a painting of 

147 



148 The Automobilist Abroad 

Velasquez, there was nothing gaudy, and one 
could only dream of the time when the Renais- 
sance house-fronts sheltered lords and ladies of 
high degree instead of itinerant automobilists and 
travelling salesmen. 

The Hotel du Cheval Blanc was one of these. 
It is not a particularly up-to-date hostelry, and 
there is a scant accommodation for automobiles, 
but for all that it is good of its kind, and one dines 
and sleeps well to the accompaniment of the rush- 
ing waters of the river, at its very dooryard, on 
its way to the sea. 

From Agde to Montpellier is fifty odd kilome- 
tres over the worst stretch of roadway of the same 
length to be found in France, save perhaps that 
awful paved road of Navarre across the Landes. 

Montpellier is one of the most luxurious and 
well-kept small cities of France. It is the seat 
of the prefecture, the assizes, and a university 
— whose college of medicine was famous in the 
days of Rabelais. It has the modern attributes 
of steam-heated, electric-lighted hotels and res- 
taurants, a tramway system that is appalling and 
dangerous to all other traffic by reason of its com- 
plexity, and an Opera House and a Hotel de Ville 
that would do credit to a city ten times its size. 

We merely took Montpellier en route, just as 
we had many other places, and were really bound 
for Aigues-Mortes, where we proposed to lunch: 
one would not willingly sleep in a place with a 
name like that. 

Of Aigues-Mortes Ch. Lentherie wrote, a quar- 
ter of a century ago : 



In Languedoc and Old Provence 149 

" The country round about is incomparably 
melancholy, the sun scorches, and the sandy soil 
gives no nourishment to plants, flowers, vines, or 
grain. Cultivated land does not exist, it is a 
desert: ugly, melancholy, and abandoned. But 
Aigues-Mortes cannot, nay, must not perish, and 
will always remain the old city of St. Louis, a 
magnificent architectural diadem, with its de- 
serted plage an aureole most radiant, a glorious 
yet touching reminder." 

One other imaginative description is the poem 
of Charles Bigot on La Tour de Constance, in 
which the Huguenot women were many long years 
imprisoned. It is written in the charming Nimois 
patois, and runs thus in its first few lines : 

" Tour de la simple et forte, 
Simbol de glorie et de pi£te\ 
Tour de pauvres femmes mortes 
Pour leur Dieu et la liberty." 

These few introductory lines will recall to the 
memory of all who know the history of the Cru- 
sades and of St. Louis the part played by this 
old walled city of Aigues-Mortes. 

More complete, and more frowning and grim, 
than Carcassonne, it has not a tithe of its interest, 
but, for all that, it is the most satisfying example 
of a walled stronghold of mediaeval times yet 
extant. 

With all its gloom, its bareness, and the few 
hundreds of shaking pallid mortals which make up 
its present-day population, the marsh city of 
Aigues-Mortes is a lively memory to all who have 
seen it. 



150 The Automobilist Abroad 

One comes by road and drives his automobile 
in through the battlemented gateway over the 
cobbled main street, or struggles up on foot from 
the station of the puny and important little rail- 
way which brings people down from Aries in 
something over an hour's time. Ultimately, one 
and all arrive at the excellent Hotel St. Louis, 
and eat bountifully of fresh fish of the Mediterra- 
nean, well cooked by the patron-chef, and well 
served by a dainty Arlesienne maiden of fifteen 
summers, who looks as though she might be 
twenty-two. 

" C'est un chose a voir " every one tells you in 
the Bouches-du-Rhone when you mention Aigues- 
Mortes ; and truly it is. As before suggested, you 
will not want to sleep within its dreary walls, but 
11 it's a thing to see " without question, and to get 
away from as soon as possible, before a peculiarly 
vicious breed of mosquito inoculates you with the 
toxic poison of the marshes. 

Now we are approaching the land of the poet 
Mistral, the most romantic region in all modern 
France, where the inhabitant in his repose and 
his pleasure still lives in mediaeval times and 
chants and dances himself (and herself) into a 
sort of semi-indifference to the march of 
time. 

The Crau and the Camargue, lying south of 
Aries between Aigues-Mortes and the Etang de 
Berre, is the greatest' fete-making pays, one might 
think, in all the world. 

How many times, from January to January, 
the Provencal " makes the fete " it would be dif- 



In Languedoc and Old Provence 151 

ficult to state — on every occasion possible, at any 
rate. 

The great fete of Provence is the day of the 
ferrande, a sort of a cattle round-up held on the 
Camargue plain, something like what goes on in 
" le Far West," as the French call it, only on 
not so grand a scale. 

Mistral describes it of course : 

" On a great branding-day came this throng, 
A help for the mighty herd-mustering, 
Li Santo, Aigo Marto, Albaron, 
And from Faraman, a hundred horses strong 
Came out into the desert." 

Here we were in the midst of the land of fetes, 
and if we could not see a ferrande in all its sav- 
age, unspoiled glory, we would see what we could. 

We were in luck, as we learned when we put 
into St. Gilles for the night, and comfortably 
enough housed our auto in the remise of the com- 
pany, or individual, which has the concession for 
the stage line across the Camargue, which links 
up the two loose ends of a toy railway, one of 
which ends at Aigues-Mortes, and the other at 
Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer. 

Our particular piece of luck was the opportu- 
nity to be present at the pilgrimage to the shrine 
of the three Marys of Judea, which took place 
on the morrow. 

The poet Mistral sets it all out in romantic 
verse in his epic " Mireio," and one and all were 
indeed glad to embrace so fortunate an opportu- 
nity of participating in one of the most nearly 
unique pilgrimages and festivals in all the world. 



152 The Automobilist Abroad 

We entered the little waterside town the next 
morning soon after snnrise. en auto. Others 
came by rail, on foot, on horseback, or by the 
slow-going roulotte, or caravan: pilgrims from 
all corners of the earth, the peasant folk of Pro- 
vence, the Arlesiens and Arlesiennes. and the 
dwellers of the great Camargne plain. 

The picture is quite as " Mireio " saw it in the 
poem: the vision of the lone sentinel church by 
the sea. which rises above the dunes of the Ca- 
margne to-day. as it did in the olden ti:. 

"... It looms at last in the distance dim. 
She sees it grow on the horizon's rim, 
The Saintes* white tower across the billowy plain, 
Like vessel homeward bound upon the main." 

On the dunes of the Camargne. between the blue 
of the sky and the blue of the Mediterranean 
waves, sits the gaunt, grim bourg of fisherfolk 
and herders of the cattle and sheep of the neigh- 
bouring plain. The lone fortress-church i 
tall and severe in its outlines, and the whole may 
be likened to nothing as much as a desert mirage 
that one sees in his imagination. 

At the foot of the crenelated, battlemented walls 
of the church are the white, pink, and blue walled 
houses of the huddling population, and the dory- 
like boats of the fisher-. 

Officially the town is known a- Stes Maries- 
de-la-Mer. but the reliques of the three Marys, 
who fled from Judea in company with Sts. Lazare, 
Maxim, and Trophime. and other followers, in- 
cluding their servant Sara, have given it the pop- 
ular name of " Les Saints 



In Languedoc and Old Provence 153 

The exiles, barely escaping death by drowning, 
came to shore here, and, thankful for being saved 
from death, thereupon celebrated the first mass 
to be said in France, the saints Maxim and Lazare 
officiating. 

Maxim, Lazare, Sidoine, Marthe, and Madeleine 
immediately set out to spread the Word through- 
out Provence in the true missionary spirit, but the 
others, the three Marys, St. Trophime, and Sara, 
remained behind to do what good they might 
among the fishers. 

The pilgrimage to this basilique of " Les 
Saintes " has ever been one of great devotion. 
In 1347 the Bishops of Paris and of Coutances, 
in Normandy, accorded their communicants many 
and varied indulgences for having made " la feste 
8. Mart Cleophee qui est le XXV. e Mai, et la feste 
8. Marie Salome, XXII e Octobre, festeront, 
Vhistoire d'elles prescherent, liront ou escoute- 
ront attentilment et devotement." 

In the fourteenth century three thousand or 
more souls drew a livelihood from the industries 
of ' ' Les Saintes ' ' and the neighbourhood, and its 
civic affairs were administered by three consuls, 
who were assisted in their duties by three classes 
of citizen office-holders — divities, mediocres, and 
paupers, the latter doubtless the " povres gens " 
mentioned in the testament of Louis I. of Pro- 
vence, he who bequeathed the guardianship of 
his soul to " Saintes Maries Jacobe et Salome, 
Catherine, Madeleine et Marthe." 

The first day's celebration was devoted to the 
further gathering of the throng and the " Grand 



154 The Automobilist Abroad 

Mess." At the first note of the " Magnificat " 
the reliques were brought forth from the upper 
chapel and the crowd from within and without 
broke into a thunderous " Vivent les Saintes 
Maries! " Then was sung the " Cantique des 
Saintes: " 

«• O grandes Saintes Maries 
Si chevies 
De notre divin Sauveur" etc. 

On the second day a -procession formed outside 
the church for the descent to the historic sands, 
upon which the holy exiles first made their land- 
ing, the men bearing on their shoulders a repre- 
sentation of the barque which brought the saints 
thither. There were prelates and plebeians and 
tourists and vagabond gipsies in line, and one 
and all they entered into the ceremony with an 
enthusiasm — in spite of the sweltering sun — 
which made up for any apparent lack of devout- 
ness, for, alas! most holy pilgrimages are any- 
thing but holy when taken in their entirety. 

The church at " Les Saintes " is a wonder- 
work. As at Assisi, in Italy, there are three su- 
perimposed churches, a symbol of the three states 
of religion; the crypt, called the catacombs, and 
suggestive of persecution; the fortified nave, a 
symbol of the body which prays, but is not afraid 
to fight; and the chapelle superieure, the holy 
place of the saints of heaven, the Christian coun- 
sellors in whose care man has been confided. 
This, at any rate, is the professional description 
of the symbolism, and whether one be churchman 
or not he is bound to see the logic of it all. 



In Languedoc and Old Provence 155 

Deep down in the darkened crypt are the 
reliques of the dusky Sara, the servant of the 
holy Marys. She herself has been elevated to 
sainthood as the patronne of the vagabond gipsies 
of all the world. On the occasion of the Fete of 
Les Saintes Maries the nomads, Bohemians, and 
Gitanos from all corners of the globe, who have 
been able to make the pilgrimage thither, pass 
the night before the shrine of their sainted pa- 
tronne, as a preliminary act to the election of 
their queen for the coming year. 

The gipsy of tradition is supposed to be a 
miserly, wealthy, sacrilegious fellow who goes 
about stealing children and dogs and anything 
else he can lay his hands upon. He may have his 
faults, but to see him kneeling before the shrine 
of his " patronne reine Sara," ragged and travel- 
worn and yet burning costly candles and saying 
his Aves as piously and incessantly as a praying- 
machine of the East, one can hardly question but 
that they have as much devoutness as most 
others. 

The hotels of " Les Saintes " offer practically 
nothing in the way of accommodation, and what 
there is, which costs usually thirty sous a night, 
has, during the fete, an inflated value of thirty 
or even fifty francs, and, if you are an automo- 
bilist, driving the most decrepit out-of-date old 
crock that ever was, they will want to charge you 
a hundred. You will, of course, refuse to pay it, 
for you can eat up the roadway at almost any 
speed you like, — there is no one to say you nay 
on these lonesome roads, — and so, after paying 



156 The Automobilist Abroad 

fifty centimes a pailful for some rather muddy 
water to refresh the water circulation of your au- 
tomobile, you pull out for some other place — at 
least we did. One must either do this, or become 
a real nomad and sleep in the open, with the 
stars for candles, and a bunch of beach-grass for 
a pillow. If you were a Romany cheil you would 
sleep in, or under, your own roulotte, on a mat- 
tress, which, in the daytime, is neatly folded away 
in the rear of your wagon, or hung in full view, 
temptingly spread with a lace coverlet. This in 
the hope that some passing pilgrim will take a 
fancy to the lace spread and want to buy it ; when 
will come a trading and bargaining which will put 
horse-selling quite in the shade, for it is here that 
the woman of the establishment comes in, and the 
gipsy woman on a trade is a Tartar. 

Finally, on the last day, came the " Grande 
Entree des Tauraux," which, it would seem, was 
the chief event which drew the Camargue popu- 
lation thither. They came in couples, a man and 
a woman on the back of a single Camargue pony, 
whole families in a Provencal cart, on foot, on 
bicycles, and in automobiles. 

Six Spanish-crossed bulls were brought up in 
a great closed van and loosed in an improvised 
bull-ring, of which the church wall formed one 
side, and the roof a sort of a tribune. What the 
cure thought of all this is not clear, but as the 
alms-coffers of the church were already full to 
the lids, and the parish depends largely upon the 
contributions of visitors to replenish its funds, 
any seeming sacrilege was winked at. 



PEASANTS OF THE. CRAU 




In Languedoc and Old Provence 157 

For three days we had " made the fete " and 
saw it all, and did most of the things that the 
others did, except that we always slept at St. 
Gilles, far away by the long, flat road which winds 
in and out among the marshes, flamingo nests, 
and rice-fields of the Camargue. 

The " bull-fight," so called, was nothing so 
very bloodthirsty or terrifying; merely the 
worrying by the " amateurs " of a short-legged, 
little black bull, about the size of a well-formed 
Newfoundland dog, or perhaps a little larger — 
appearances are often deceptive when one re- 
ceives a disappointment. 

Truly, as Mistral says, Provence is a land of 
joy and laughter, and fetes followed close on one 
another, it seemed. 

We had seen the announcements in the local 
journals of a " Mis a Mort " at Nimes, and a 
"Corrida de Meurte " — borrowing the phrase 
from the Spanish — at Aries, each to take place 
in the great Roman arenas, which had not seen 
bloodshed for centuries ; not since the days when 
the Romans matched men against each other in 
gladiatorial combat, and turned tigers loose upon 
captive slaves. 

The ' ' to-the-death ' ' affairs of Aries and Nimes 
appealed to us only that we might contrast the 
modern throngs that crowd the benches with those 
which history tells us viewed the combats of old. 
Doubtless there is little resemblance, but all the 
same there is a certain gory tradition hanging 
about the old walls and arches of those great 
arenas which is utterly lacking in the cricket- 



158 The Automobilist Abroad 

field, tawdry plazas of some of the Spanish towns. 
The grim arcades of these great Roman arenas 
are still full of suggestion. 

We did not see either the " Mis a Mort " at 
Aries, or the " Corrida de Meurte " at Nimes; 
the automobile got stalled for a day in the midst 
of the stony Crau, with a rear tire which blew 
itself into pieces, and necessitated a journey by 
train into Aries in order to get another to replace 
it. Owing to the slowness of this apology for a 
railway train, and the awkwardness of the time- 
table, the great " Mis a Mort " at Aries was long 
over ere we had set out over the moonlit Crau 
for Martigues on the shores of the Etang de 
Berre. 

We knew Martigues of old, its bouillabaisse, 
the Pere Chabas and all the cronies of the Cafe 
du Commerce where you kept your own special 
bottle, of whatever aperitif poison you fancied, in 
order that you might be sure of getting it un- 
adulterated. 

" La Venise de Provence," Martigues, is known 
by artists far and wide. Chabas and his rather 
grimy little hotel, which he calls the Grand Hotel 
something or other, has catered for countless hun- 
dreds of artist folk who have made the name and 
fame of Martigues as an artist's sketching- 
ground. After a three weeks ' pretty steady auto- 
mobile run the artist of the party craved peace 
and rest and an opportunity of putting Mar- 
tigues 's glorious sunsets on canvas, and so we 
camped out with Chabas, and ate bouillabaisse 



In Languedoc and Old Provence 159 

and the beurre de Provence and langouste and 
Chabas's famous straw potatoes and rum ome- 
lette for ten days, and were sorry when it was 
all over. 




^^^^afeftT 



161 



CHAPTER IV 

BY RHONE AND SAONE 

It is the dream of the Marseillais that some day 
the turgid Rhone may be made to empty itself at 
the foot of the famous Cannebiere, and so add to 
the already great prosperity of the most cosmo- 
politan and picturesque of Mediterranean ports. 

The idea has been thought of since Roman 
times, and Napoleon himself nearly undertook the 
work. In later days radical and vehement candi- 
dates for senatorships and deputyships have 
promised their Marseilles and Bouches-du-Rhone 
constituencies much more, with regard to the same 
thing, than the hand of man is ever likely to be 
able to accomplish. 

The Rhone still pushes its way through the Crau 
and the Camargue and comes to the sea many 
kilometres west of the Planier light and Chateau 
d'lf, which guard the entrance to Marseilles 's Old 
Port. 

We had backed and filled many times between 
Martigues and Marseilles during the interval 
which we so enjoyably spent chez Chabas, and we 
had come to know this unknown little corner of 
old Provence intimately, and to love it. 

Marseilles was our great dissipation, its hotels, 

163 



164 The Automobilist Abroad 

its cafes and restaurants, its cosmopolitan life and 
movement, its gaiety and the picturesqueness of 
its old streets and wharves. Marseilles is a neg- 
lected tourist point; it should be better known; 
but it is no place for automobilists, unless they 
are prepared for ten kilometres, in any direction, 
of the most villainous suburban roadway in 
France. The roadways themselves are good 
enough; it is the abnormal and the peculiar 
nature of the traffic that makes them so disagree- 
able; great hooting tramways, chareltes loaded 
with all the products of the earth and the hands 
of man, and drawn by long tandem lines, three, 
four, five, and even six horses to a single cart. 
Added to this, the exits and entrances are all up 
and down hill, and, accordingly, the roadways of 
suburban Marseilles are a terror to stranger 
automobilists and an eternal regret to those who 
live near-by. 

We went up the Rhone in a howling mistral, 
against it, mark you, for it pleases the Ruler of 
the universe to have that cyclonic breeze of the 
Rhone valley, one of the three plagues of Pro- 
vence, blow always from the north. 

We left Martigues in an extraordinary and 
unusual fog, reminiscent of London, except that 
it was not black and sooty. It was dense, how- 
ever, dense as if it were enshrouding the Grand 
Banks, and of the same impenetrable, milky con- 
sistency. To be sure the morning sun had not had 
an opportunity as yet to burn it off — automobil- 
ists on tour are early birds, and the autumn sun 
rises late. 



By Rhone and Saone 165 

Up around the eastern shore of the Etang de 
Berre we went, and, crossing the Tete Noire, 
passed Salon just as a pale yellow light struggled 
through the rifts just topping the Maritime Alps 
off to the eastward. We could not see the moun- 
tains, but we knew they were there, for we still 
had lingering memories of a long pull we once 
made off in that direction, with an old crock of 
an automobile of primitive make in the early days 
of the sport, or the art, whichever one chooses to 
call it, though it unquestionably was an art then 
to keep an automobile going at all. 

By the time Aries was reached the sun was 
burning with a midsummer glare, as it does here 
for three hundred or more days in the year. 

At Aries one is in the very cauldron of the at- 
mosphere of things Provencal, art, letters, history, 
and romance, all of which are kept alive by the 
Felibres and their fellows. 

Mistral, the poet, is the master-singer of them 
all, and whether he chants of his " Own glad 
Kingdom of Provence," at Maillane among the 
olive-trees, far inland, or of: 

" The peace which descends upon the troubled ocean 
And he his wrath forgets, 
Flock from Martigues the boats with wing-like motion, 
And fishes fill their nets," 

it is all the same; the subtle, penetrating atmos- 
phere and sentiment of Provence is over all. 

Aries is the head centre. It is a city of monu- 
mental and celebrated art, and one may spend 
a day, a week, or a month, wandering in and out 



166 The Automobilist Abroad 

and about its old Roman arena (still so well 
preserved that it presents its occasional bull-fight 
for the delectation of the bloodthirsty), its an- 
tique theatre, its museums, its cathedral and its 
cloister, or among the tombs of the Aliscamps. 

We did all these things, indeed we had done 
them before, but they were ever marvellous just 
the same, and in the museum we were always run- 
ning on Mistral himself, who, in his waning years, 
finds his greatest delight in arranging and re- 
arranging the exhibits of his newly founded 
Musee Arletan. 

The hotels of Aries are a disappointment. The 
Hotel du Nord, with a portico of the old Forum 
built into its walls, and the Hotel du Forum, on 
the Place du Forum, are well enough in their 
way, — they are certainly well conducted, — but 
they lack " atmosphere," and instead of the cui- 
sine du pays, you get ham and eggs and bifteck 
served to you. This is wrong and bad business, 
if the otherwise capable proprietors only knew it. 

One does better in the environs. At St. Remy, 
at the Grand Hotel de Provence, you will get 
quite another sort of fare: hors d'ceuvres of a 
peculiarly pungent variety, not forgetting the 
dark purple, over-ripe olives, a ragout en casse- 
role, a filet d'agneau with a sauce Provengale, 
and a poulet and a salad which will make one 
dream of the all but lost art of Brillat-Savarin. 
They are good cooks, the chefs of Provence, of 
the small cities and large towns like St. Remy, 
Cavaillon, Salon, and Carpentras, but everybody 
will not like their liberal douches of oil any more 



By Rhone and Saone 167 

than they will the penetrating garlic flavour in 
everything. 

We took a turn backward on our route from 
Aries and went to Lea Baux, the now dismal ruin 
of a once proud feudal city whose seigneurs held 
sway over some sixty cities of Provence. 

To-day it is a Pompeii, except it is a hill town 
worthy to rank with those picturesque peaks of 
Italy and Dalmatia. Its chateau walls have 
crumbled, but its subterranean galleries cut three 
stories down into the rock itself, are much as they 
always were. Everywhere are grim, doleful evi- 
dences of a glory that is past and a population 
that is dead or moved away. The sixteen thou- 
sand souls of mediaeval times have shrunk to 
something like two hundred to-day — most of 
them shepherds, apparently, and the others pic- 
ture post-card sellers. 

It is a very satisfactory little mountain climb 
from the surrounding plain up to the little plateau 
just below the peak at Les Baux, though the en- 
tire distance from Aries is scarcely more than 
fifteen kilometres, and the actual climb hardly 
more than four. The razor-back mountain chain, 
upon one peak of which Les Baux sits, is known 
as the Alpilles. 

All of the immediate neighbourhood (scarce a 
dozen kilometres from where the beaten track 
passes through Aries) is a veritable museum of 
relics of the glory of the heroic age. Caius 
Manus entrenched himself within these walls of 
rock and two thousand years ago planted the foun- 
dations of the Mausoleum and Arc de Triomphe 



168 The Automobilist Abroad 

which are the pride of the inhabitant of St. Remy 
and the marvel of what few strangers ever come. 
They are veritable antiques — " Les Antiquites, ' ' 
as the people of St. Remy familiarly call them, 
and rise to-day as monuments of the past, gilded 
by the Southern sun and framed with all the bril- 
liancy of a Provencal landscape. 

We slept at St. Remy, and made the next morn- 
ing for Tarascon, with memories of Dumas and 
Daudet and Tartarin and the Tarasque pushing 
us on. 

Tarascon has a real appeal for the stranger; 
at every step he will picture the locale of Daudet 's 
whimsical tale, and will well understand how it 
was that the prisoners' view from the narrow- 
barred window of the Chateau at Tarascon was 
so limited. 

There is a fine group of Renaissance architec- 
tural monuments at Tarascon, and a street of- 
arcaded house-fronts which will make the artist 
of the party want to settle down to work. 

Across the river is Beaucaire, famous for its 
great fair of ages past, the greatest trading fair 
of mediaeval times, when merchants and their 
goods came from Persia, India, and Turkey, and 
all corners of the earth. The Chateau of Beau- 
caire is a fine ruin, but no more; it is not worth 
the climbing of the height to examine it. 

A little farther on is Bellegarde, where Dumas 
placed Caderousse's little inn, the unworthy 
Caderousse and his still more unworthy wife, 
who nearly finished the career of Edmond Dantes 
while he was masquerading as the Abbe. There 



By Rhone and Saone 169 

is no inn here to-day which can be identified as 
that of the romance, but Dumas 's description of 
its sun-burnt surroundings, the canal, the scanty 
herbage, and the white, parched roadway, is much 
the same as what one sees to-day, and there is a 
tiny auberge beside the canal, which might sat- 
isfy the imaginative. 

Avignon, the city of the seven French popes, 
who reigned seventy years, was the next stopping- 
place on our itinerary. 

We put up at the Hotel Crillon and fared much 
as one fares in any provincial large town. We 
were served with imitation Parisian repasts, and 
were asked if we would like to read the London 
Times. Why the London Times no one knew: 
why not the New Orleans Picayune and be done 
with it? 

We did not want to do anything of the sort, 
we merely wanted to " do " the town, to see the 
tomb of Pope Jean XXII. in the cathedral, to 
walk, if possible, upon the part left standing of 
St. Benezet's old Pont d 'Avignon, a memory 
which was burned into our minds since our school- 
days, when we played and sang the French ver- 
sion of ' ' London Bridge is falling down ' ' — 
" Sur le pont d'Avignon." 

The greatest monument of all is the magnificent 
Palais des Papes, its crenelated walls and battle- 
ments vying with the city walls and ramparts as 
a splendid example of mediaeval architecture. 
We saw all these things and the museum with its 
excellent collections, and the library of thirty 



170 The Automobilist Abroad 

thousand volumes and four thousand manu- 
scripts. 

One thing we nearly missed was Villeneuve-les- 
Avignon, a ruined wall-circled town on the oppo- 
site bank of the Rhone. Its machicolated crests 
glistened in the brilliant Southern sunlight like 
an exotic of the Saharan country. It is quite the 
most foreign and African-looking jumble of archi- 
tectural forms to be seen in France. It took us 
three hours to cross the river and stroll about 
its debris-encumbered streets and get back again 
and start on our way northward, but it was worth 
the time and trouble. 

From St. Remy to Orange, perhaps sixty kilo- 
metres, was not a long daily run by any means, 
and we would not have stopped at Orange for the 
night except that it was imperative that we should 
see the fine antique theatre, the most magnificent, 
the largest, and the best preserved of all existing 
Roman theatres. 

We saw it, and seeing it wondered, though, 
when one tries to project the mind back into the 
past and picture the scenes which once went on 
upon its boards, the task were seemingly impos- 
sible. 

The Roman Arc de Triomphe, too, at Orange, 
which spans the roadway to the North — the same 
great natural road which all its length from Paris 
to Antibes is known as the Route d'ltalie — is a 
monument more splendid, as to its preservation, 
than anything of the kind outside Italy itself. 

There is ample and excellent accommodation 
for the automobilist at Orange, at the Hotel des 



By Rhone and Saone 171 

Princes, which sounds good and is good. They 
have even a writing-room in the hotel, a silly, 
stuffy little room which no one with any sense 
ever enters. One simply follows a well-fed com- 
mis-voyageur to the nearest popular cafe and 
writes his letters there, as a well-habituated trav- 
eller should do. 

Once on the road again we passed Montelimar 
— " le pays du nougat et de M. I' ex-President 
Loubet," we were told by the octroi official who 
held us up at the barrier of this self-sufficient, 
dead-and-alive, pompous little town. We didn't 
know M. Loubet and we didn't like nougat, so we 
did not stop, but pushed on for Tournon. There, 
at the little Hotel de la Poste, beneath the donjon 
tower of the old chateau, we ate the most marvel- 
lously concocted dejeuner we had struck for a long 
time. There's no use describing it; it won't be 
the same the next time; though no doubt it will 
be as excellent. It cost but two francs fifty cen- 
times, including vin du St. Peray, the rich red 
wine of the Rhone, a rival to the wines of Bur- 
gundy. 

We might have done a good deal worse had we 
stopped at progressive, up-to-date Valence, where 
automobile tourists usually do stop, but we took 
the offering of the small town instead of the large 
one, and found it, as usual, very good. 

We had passed La Voute-sur-Rhone, that classic 
height which has been pictured many times in old 
books of travel. It, and Tournon, and Valence, 
and Viviers, and Pont St. Esprit were once river- 
side stations for the coches d'eau which did a sort 



172 The Automobilist Abroad 

of omnibus service with passengers on the Rhone, 
between Lyons and Avignon. There is a steam- 
boat service to-day which also carries passengers, 
but it is not to be recommended if one has the 
means of getting about by road. 

This town, too, and Valence, were directly on 
the route of the malle-poste from Lyons to Mar- 
seilles. The different postes or relays were 
marked on the maps of the day by little twisted 
hunting-horns. For the most part an old-time 
route map of the great trunk lines of the malle- 
poste and the messageries would serve the auto- 
mobilist of to-day equally as well as a modern 
road map. 

The malle-poste, and the hiring out of post- 
horses, in France was an institution more highly 
developed than elsewhere. 

Post-horses were only delivered one in France 
upon the presentation of a passport and payment, 
in advance, according to the following tariff. The 
price was fixed by law, being the same throughout 
all France. 

1 Poste (about 15 miles) 1 franc 50 centimes 

£ « 75 " 

i « 38 " 

The postilion usually got one franc fifty per 
poste, but could only demand seventy-five cen- 
times. 

Certain carriages (chaises and cabriolets) 
would carry only portmanteaux (vaches), but 
voitures fermees, caleches, and the like might 
carry also a trunk (malle). 



By Rhone and Saone 173 

As one goes north, sunburnt Provence, its olive 
groves and its oil and garlic-seasoned viands are 
left behind, until little by little one draws upon the 
Burgundian opulence of the Cote d'Or, a land 
where the native 's manner of eating and drinking 
makes a full life and a merry one. 

We were not there yet ; we had many kilometres 
yet to go, always by the banks of the Rhone until 
Lyons was reached. 

Near Givors, at eight o'clock at night, within 
twenty kilometres of Lyons, the motor gave a 
weak asthmatic gasp, and stopped short. Like the 
foolish virgins, we had no oil in our lamps, and 
dusk had already fallen, and no amount of coax- 
ing after the habitual manner would induce the 
thing to move a yard. 

There was nothing for it but to get out the tow- 
ropes and wait — for a remorqueur, as the French 
call any four-footed beast strong enough to tow 
an automobile at the end of a line. (They also 
call a tug-boat the same thing, but as an automo- 
bile is not an amphibious animal it was a land 
remorqueur that we awaited.) 

We did not get to Lyons that night. There are 
always uncalled for " possibilities " rising up in 
automobiling that will upset the best thought-out 
schedule. This was one of them. 

What had happened to the machine no one yet 
really knows, but we had to be ignominiously 
towed, to the great amusement of the natives, at 
the end of a long rope by the power of a diminu- 
tive donkey which finally came along. The beast 



174 The Automobilist Abroad 

did not look as though he could draw a peram- 
bulator, but he buckled down to it with a will, 
and brought us safely through the half-kilometre 
or so of crooked streets which led to the centre 
of Givors. 

Finally, we, or the car rather, was pushed into 
an old wash-house, once a part of an ancient 
chateau, the remise of the hotel itself, a depend- 
ance of the chateau of other days, having been 
preempted by an itinerant magic-lantern exhibi- 
tion ("La Cinemetographe Americaine," it was 
called on the bills), which proposed to show the 
good people of Givors — ' ' for one night only, 
and at ten sous each" — moving pictures of 
Coney Island, Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Niagara 
Falls, New York's " Flat Iron " building, and 
other exotics from the New World. 

We dined and slept well at Givors in spite of 
our accident, and were ' ' up bright and early, ' ' as 
Pepys might have said (Londoners to-day do not 
get up bright and early, however!), to find out, 
if possible, what was the matter with the digestive 
apparatus of the automobile. Nothing was the 
matter! The human, obstinate thing started off 
at the first trial, and probably would have done 
the same thing last night had we given the start- 
ing-crank one more turn. Such is automobil- 
ing! 

We made our entrance into Lyons en pleine 
vitesse, stopping not until we got to the centre 
of the city. The octroi regulations had just been 
revised, and the gates were open to passing traffic 



By Rhone and Saone 175 

without the obligation of having to declare one's 
possessions. Progressive Lyons ! 

Lyons is truly progressive. It is beautifully 
laid out and kept. It is nothing like as filthy as 
a large city usually is, on the outskirts, and its 
island faubourg, between the Saone and the 
Ehone, is the ideal of a well-organized and 
planned centre of affairs. 

Lyons has, moreover, two up-to-date hotels, the 
very latest things, one might say, in the hotel line : 
the Terminus Hotel, which well serves travellers 
by rail, and the Hotel de PUnivers et de PAuto- 
mobilisme — rather a clumsy name, but that of a 
good, well-meaning hotel. Its progressiveness 
consists in having abolished the pourboire. You 
have ten per cent, added on to your bill, however. 
This looks large when it comes to figures, — pay- 
ing something for nothing, — but at least one 
knows where he stands, and he fears no black 
looks from chambermaid or boots. The thing is 
announced, by a little placard placed in every 
room, asan <( innovation." It remains to be seen 
if it will prove successful. 

From Lyons to Dijon, 197 kilometres between 
breakfast and lunch, was not bad. Now, at last, 
we were in that opulent land of good living and 
good drinking, where the food and wine are alike 
both rich. 

He's a contented, fat, sleek-looking type, the 
native son of the Cote d'Or, and he looks with 
contempt on the cider-nourished Norman an(? 
Breton, and does not for a moment think thai 



176 The Automobilist Abroad 

cognac is to be compared with the eau de vie de 
marc of his own vineyards. 

The Cote d'Or is the richest wine-growing 
region of all the world. Every direction-post and 
sign-board is like a review of the names on a wine 
card, — Beaune, Chambertin, St. Georges, Clos 
Vougeot, — and of these the Clos Vougeot wines 
are the most renowned. 

A line drawn across France, just north of the 
confines of ancient Burgundy, divides the region 
of the v ins ordinaires — the light wines of the 
tables d'hote — and that of those vintages which 
have no price. This, at least, is the way the 
native puts it, and to some extent the simile is 
correct enough. 

The Cote begins and the plain ends; the hill- 
sides rise and the river-bottoms dwindle away in 
the distance : such is the feeling that one experi- 
ences as he climbs these vine-clad slopes from 
either the Ehone, the Loire, or the Seine valleys, 
and here it is that the imaginary line is drawn 
between the vins ordinaires and the vins sans 
prix. 

Since there is no possibility of increasing the 
quantity of these rich, red Burgundian wines, the 
highly cultured area being of but small extent, 
and because their quality depends upon the pecul- 
iar nature of the soil of this restricted tract, there 
is no question but that the monopoly of Burgun- 
dian wines will remain for ever with the gold 
coast of France, whatever Australian and Cali- 



By Rhone and Saone 177 

fornian patriots may claim for their own imita- 
tions. 

The phylloxera here, as elsewhere in France, 
caused a setback to the commerce in wines, as 
serious in money figures as the losses sustained 
during the Franco-Prussian War, but the time 
has now passed and the famous Cote d'Or has 
once more attained its time-honoured opulence 
and prosperity. 

" Le vin de Bourgogne 
Met la bonne humeur 
An cceur." 

Still northward, across the plateau of Langres, 
we set a roundabout course for Paris. There is 
one great pleasure about automobiling that is 
considerably curtailed if one sets out to follow 
precisely a preconceived itinerary, and for that 
reason we were, in a measure, going where fancy 
willed. 

We might have turned westward, via Moulins, 
Nevers, and Montargis, from Lyons, and followed 
the old coaching road into Paris, entering by the 
same gateway through which we set out, but we 
had heard of the charms of the valley of the 
Marne, and we wanted to see them for ourselves. 

Our first acquaintance with it was at Bar le 
Due, which is not on the Marne at all, but on a 
little confluent some twenty or thirty miles from 
its junction. . 

For a day we had been riding over corkscrew 
roads with little peace and comfort for the driver, 



178 The Automobilist Abroad 

and considerable hard work for the motor. The 
hills were numerous, but the surface was good and 
the scenery delightful, so, since most of us require 
variety as a component of our daily lives, we were 
getting what we wanted and no one complained. 
It was easy going by Chateau Thierry and the 
episcopal city of Meaux, retracing almost the 
itinerary of the fleeing Louis XVI., and, as we 
entered Paris by the Porte de Vincennes, — al- 
ways by villainous roadways, this getting in and 
out of Paris, — we red-inked another twelve hun- 
dred kilometre stretch of roadway on our record 
map of France. 




^SEINE 53W0ISE 




179 



CHAPTER V 

BY SEINE AND OISE A CRUISE IN A CANOT - AUTO- 
MOBILE 

If automobiling on land in France is a pleasure, 
a voyage up a picturesque and historic French 
river in a canot-automobile is a dream, so at least 
we thought, four of us — and a boy to clean the 
engine, run errands, and to climb overboard and 
push us off when we got stuck in the mud. 

Our " home port " was Les Andelys on the 
Seine, and we met in the courtyard of the Hotel 
Bellevue at five o'clock one misty, gray September 
morning for a fortnight's voyage up the Oise, 
which joins the Seine midway between Les An- 
delys and Paris. 

There is nothing mysterious about an automo- 
bile boat any more than there is about the land 
automobile. It has its moods and vagaries, its 
good points and some bad ones. It is not as 
speedy as an automobile on shore, but it is more 
comfortable, a great deal more fun to steer, and 
less dangerous, and there is an utter absence of 
those chief causes of trouble to the automobile, 
punctures and what not happening to your tires. 
Then again there is, generally speaking, no crowd 

181 



182 The Automobilist Abroad 

of traffic to run you into danger, and there is an 
absence of dust, to make up for which, when you 
are lying by waiting to go through a lock, you 
have mosquitoes of a fierce bloodthirsty kind 
which even the smoke from the vile tobacco of 
French cigarettes will not keep at a distance. 

Our facile little automobile boat was called the 
" Cd et La." Rightly enough named it was, too. 
The French give singularly pert and appropriate 
names to their boats. " Va Von" " Quand 
meme," and " Cd et La" certainly tell the stories 
of their missions in their very names. 

The boat itself, and its motor, too, was purely 
a French production, and, though of modest force 
and dimensions, would do its dozen miles an hour 
all day long. 

"We got away from the landing-stage of the 
Touring Club de France at Les Andelys in good 
time, our provisions, our gasoline and oil, our 
river charts, our wraps and ourselves all stowed 
comfortably away in the eight metres of length 
of our little boat. Our siren gave a hoot which 
startled the rooks circling about the donjon walls 
of Chateau Gaillard over our heads, and we 
passed under the brick arches of the bridge for a 
twelve-mile run to the first lock at Courcelles. 

The process of going through a river lock in 
France is not far different from the same process 
elsewhere, except that the all-powerful Touring 
Club de France has secured precedence for all 
pleasure boats over any other waiting craft. It 
really costs nothing, but you give a franc to the 



By Seine and Oise 183 

eclusier, and the way is thereby made the easier 
for the next arrival. The objection to river-locks 
is their frequency in some parts. There is one 
stretch of thirty or forty kilometres on the Marne 
with thirty-three locks. That costs something, 
truly. 

We knew the Seine valley intimately, by road 
along both its banks, at any rate, and we were 
hopeful of reaching Triel that night, near the 
junction of the Seine "and Oise. 

We passed our first lock at Courcelles, just 
before seven o'clock, and had a good stretch of 
straight water ahead of us before Vernon was 
reached. 

You cannot miss your way, of course, when 
travelling by river, but you can be at a consider- 
able loss to know how far you have come since 
your last stopping-place, or rather you would be 
if the French government had not placed little 
white kilometre stones all along the banks of the 
" navigable " and " ftottable " rivers, as they 
have along the great national roads on land. 
Blessed be the paternal French government; the 
traveller in la belle France has much for which 
to be grateful to it: its excellent roadways, its 
sign-boards, and its kilometre stones most of all. 
The motor-boat is highly developed in France 
from the simple fact that you can tour on it. You 
can go all over France by a magnificent system 
of inland waterways; from the Seine to the 
Marne; from the Oise to the Sambre — and so 
to Antwerp and Ghent; from the Loire to the 



184 The Automobilist Abroad 

Rhone; and even from the Marne to the Rhine; 
and from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. 
France is the touring-ground par excellence for 
the automobile boat. 

Here's a new project of travel for those who 
want to do what others have not done to any great 
extent. Africa and the Antartic continent have 
been explored, and the North Pole bids fair to 
be discovered by means of a flying-machine ere 
long, so, with no new worlds to conquer, one 
might do worse in the way of pleasurable travel 
than to explore the waterways of France. 

Maistre wrote his " Voyage Autour de Ma 
Chambre " and Karr his " Voyage Autour de 
Mon Jardin," hence any one who really wants to 
do something similar might well make the tour 
of the He de France by water. It can be done, 
and would be a revelation of novelty, if one would 
do it and write it down. 

For the moment we were bound up the Oise; 
we had passed Vernon and Giverny, sitting snug 
on the hillside by the mouth of the Ept, where we 
knew there were countless Americans, artists and 
others, sitting in Gaston's garden or playing ten- 
nis on a sunburnt field beside the road. Foolish 
business that, with a river like the Seine so near 
at hand, and because it was the custom at Giverny, 
a custom grown to be a habit, which is worse, we 
liked not the place, in spite of its other undeniable 
charms. 

We put in for lunch at La Roche-Guyon, a 
trim little town lying close beneath the Renais- 



By Seine and Oise 185 

sance chateau of the La Rochefoucauld's. There 
are two waterside hotels at La Roche-Guyon, 
beside the ugly wire-rope bridge, but we knew 
them of old, and knew they were likely to be full 
of an unspeakable class of Parisian merrymakers. 
There may be others who patronize these delight- 
fully situated riverside inns, but the former pre- 
dominate in the season. Out of season it may be 
quite different. 

We hunted out a little cafe in the town, whose 
patron we knew, and prevailed upon his good 
wife to give us our lunch en famille, which she 
did and did well. 

It was tres bourgeois, but that was what we 
wanted, and, after a couple of hours eating and 
lolling about and playing with the cats and talk- 
ing to the parrot, — a Martinique parrot who 
knew some English, — we took to the river again, 
and, after passing the locks at Bonnieres, arrived 
at Mantes at five o'clock. 

The nights draw in quickly, even in the early 
days of September, and we were bound to push 
on, if we were to reach Triel that night. We 
could have reached it, but were delayed at a lock, 
while it emptied itself and half a score of down- 
river barges, and, spying a gem of a riverside 
restaurant at Meulan, overhanging the very water 
itself, and hung with great golden orange globes 
of light (so-called Japanese lanterns, and nothing 
more), we were sentimentally enough inclined to 
want to dine with such Claude Melnotte acces- 
sories. This we did, and hunted up lodgings in 



186 The Automobilist Abroad 

the town for the night, vowing to get an extra 
early start in the morning to make up for lost 
time. 

The Seine at Meulan takes on a certain luxuri- 
ous aspect so far as river-boating goes. There 
is even a " Cercle a la Voile," with yachts which, 
in the narrow confines of the river, look like the 
real thing, but which after all are very diminutive 
members of the family. 

From this point the course of the Seine is a 
complicated winding among lies and Hots, which 
gives it that elongation which makes necessary 
hours of journeying by boat as against a quarter 
of the time by the road — as the crow flies — to 
the lower fortifications of Paris. 

On either side, however, are chemins vicinales, 
which continually produce unthought-of vistas 
which automobilists who are making a record 
from Trouville to Paris know nothing of. 

Triel possesses an imposing thirteenth-century 
Gothic church and an abominably ugly suspension- 
bridge of wire rope. It is a good place to buy 
a boat or a cargo of gypsum, which we know as 
' ' plaster of Paris ; ' ' otherwise the town is not 
remarkable, though charmingly situated. 

The Oise is the first really great commercial 
tributary of the Seine. There is a mighty flow 
of commerce which ascends and descends the 
bosom of the Oise, extending even to the Low 
Countries and the German Ocean, through the 
Sambre to Antwerp and the Scheldt. 

The Oise is classed as flottable from Beautor 



By Seine and Oise 187 

to Chauny, a distance of twenty kilometres, and 
navigable from Chauny to the Seine. Mostly it 
runs through the great plain of Picardie and 
forms the natural northern boundary to the 
ancient He de France. The navigable portion 
forms two sections. One, of fifty-five kilometres, 
extends between Chauny and Janville, and has 
been generally abandoned by water-craft because 
of the opening of the Canal Lateral a la Oise ; the 
other section, of one hundred and four kilometres, 
is canalized in that it has been straightened here 
and there at sharp corners, dredged and endowed 
with seven locks. 

The barge traffic of the Oise is mostly towed in 
convoys of six, but there is a chemin de halage, 
a tow-path, throughout the river's length. In 
general, the boats are of moderate size, the 
peniches being perhaps a hundred and twenty 
feet in length, the bateaux picards somewhat 
longer, and the chalands approximating one hun- 
dred and sixty to one hundred and seventy-five 
feet. 

While, as stated above, the traction is generally 
by steam towboat, the more picturesque, if slower 
and more humble, tow-horse is more largely in 
evidence here than elsewhere in France. 

The environs of Conflans-fin-d'Oise are of a 
marvellous charm, but the immediate surround- 
ings, great garages of coal boats and barges, 
coal-yards where towboats are filling up, and all 
the grime of an enormous water-borne traffic 



188 The Automobilist Abroad 

which here divides, part to go Parisward and 
part down-river, make it unlovely enough. 

Three kilometres up-river is a little riverside 
inn called the " Goujon de l'Oise." It is a pleas- 
ant place to lunch, but otherwise " fishy," as 
might be supposed. 

Back toward Meulan and on the heights above 
Triel are nestled a half-dozen picturesque little 
red-roofed villages which are not known at all 
to travellers from Paris by road or rail. It is 
curious how many sylvan spots one can find 
almost within plain sight of Paris. There are 
wheat-fields within sight of Montmartre and hay- 
stacks almost under the shadow of Mont Valerian. 

At Evequemont, just back of Conflans, some 
eight hundred souls eke out an existence on their 
small farms and live the lives of their grand- 
fathers before them, with never so much as a 
thought as to what may be happening at the cap- 
ital twenty kilometres away. 

Boisemont is another tiny village, with an 
eighteenth-century chateau which would form an 
idyllic retreat from the cares of city ways. Cour- 
dimanche, a few miles farther on, is unknown and 
unspoiled. It crowns a hilltop, with its diminutive 
and unusual red-roofed church overtopping all 
and visible from the river, or from the rolling 
country round about, for many miles. Here the 
Oise makes a long parallelogram-like turn from 
Maurecourt around to Eragny, perhaps two miles 
in a bee-line, but seemingly twenty by the river's 
course. 



By Seine and Oise 189 

The land automobile has a distinct advantage 
here in speed over the canot, but one's point of 
view is not so lovely. It is only twelve kilometres 
to Pontoise, where^ one passes the barrage just 
below the town and saunters on shore for a spell, 
just to get acquainted with the place that Paris- 
ians know so well by name, and yet so little in 
reality. 

Pontoise is the metropolis of the Oise, though 
it, too, is a veritable French country town, such 
as one would hardly expect to find within twenty 
kilometres of Paris. The islands of the river are 
dotted with trees and petit maisons de campagne, 
and the right bank is bordered with great chalky 
cliffs, as is the Seine in Normandy. 

The general appearance of Pontoise is most 
pleasing. At first glance it looks like a mediaeval 
Gothic city, and again even Oriental. At any rate, 
it is an exceedingly unworldly sort of a place, 
with here and there remains of its bold ramparts 
and its zigzag and tortuous streets, but with no 
very great grandeur anywhere to be remarked, 
except in the Eglise St. Maclou. 

The history of Pontoise is long and lurid, be- 
ginning with the times of the Gauls when it was 
known as Briva Isaroe. It is a long time since 
the ramparts protected the old Chateau of the 
Counts of Vexin — literally the land dedicated to 
Vulcan (pagus Vulcanis) - - where many French 
kings often resided. Many religious establish- 
ments flourished here, too, all more or less under 
royal patronage, including the Abbeys of St. 



190 The Automobilist Abroad 

Mellon and St. Martin, and the Couvent des 
Cordeliers, in whose splendid refectory the exiled 
Parlement held its sessions in 1652, 1720, and 
1753. Out of this circumstance grew the proverb 
or popular saying, " Avoir I'air de revenir de 
Pontoise." The domain of Pontoise belonged in 
turn to many seigneurs, but up to the Revolution 
it was still practically une ville monastique. 

As one comes to the lower streets of the town, 
near the station, and between it and the river, 
the resemblance to a little corner of the Pays 
Bas is remarkable, and therein lies its pictur- 
esqueness, if not grandeur. Artists would love 
the narrow Rue des Attanets, with its curious 
flanking houses of wood and stone, and the Rue 
de Rouen, which partakes of much the same char- 
acteristics. Along the river are great flour-mills, 
with wash-houses and red-armed, blue-bloused 
women eternally washing and rinsing. All this 
would furnish studies innumerable to those who 
are able to fabricate mouldy walls and tumble- 
down picturesqueness out of little tubes of colour 
and gray canvas. Here, too, at Pontoise, in its 
little port, none too cleanly because of the refuse 
and grime of ashes and coal soot, one sees the 
first of the heavy chalands loaded with iron ore 
from the Ardennes, or coal from Belgium, mak- 
ing their way to the wharves of Paris via the 
Canal St. Denis. 

More distant, and more pleasing to many, is 
that variety of landscape made famous, and even 
popular, by Dupre and Daubigny. So, on the 



By Seine and Oise 191 

whole, Pontoise, and the country round about, 
should properly be classed among the things to 
which few have ever given more than a passing 
glance, but which have a vast reserve fund of 
attractions hidden behind them, needing only to 
be sought out to be admired. 

St. Ouen PAunione, a tiny little town of a couple 
of thousand souls, opposite Pontoise, has two re- 
markable attractions which even a bird of pas- 
sage might well take the time to view. One is 
the very celebrated Abbaye de Maubisson, indeed 
it might be called notorious, if one believed the 
chronicles relating to the proceedings which took 
place there under Angelique d'Estrees, sister of 
the none too saintly Gabrielle. 

It was founded in 1236 by Blanche of Castile, 
for the former religieuses of Citeaux, and was 
justly celebrated in the middle ages for the luxu- 
riousness of its appointments and the excellence 
of its design. 

The other feature of St. Ouen l'Aumone, which 
got its name, by the way, from a former Arch- 
bishop of Rouen, is a remarkable example of one 
of those great walled farmyards in which the 
north of France, Normandy in particular, for- 
merly abounded. It is all attached to what was 
known as the Pare de Maubisson, which itself is 
closed by a high, ancient wall with two turrets at 
the corners. This wall is supposed to date from 
the fourteenth century, and within are the remains 
of a vast storehouse or grange of the same cen- 
tury. The only building at all approaching this 



192 The Automobilist Abroad 

great storehouse is the Halle au Ble at Rouen, 
which it greatly resembles as to size. It is now 
in the hands of a grain merchant who must deal 
on a large scale, as he claims to have one hundred 
thousand gerbes (sheaves) in storage at one time. 
The interior is divided into three naves by two 
files of monocylindrical columns, though the east- 
ern aisle has practically been demolished. 

At Auvers, just above Pontoise, which is bound 
to Mery by an ugly iron bridge across the Oise, is 
a fine church of the best of twelfth and thirteenth 
century Gothic, with a series of Romanesque 
windows in the apse. Here, too, the country im- 
mediately environing Auvers and Mery is of the 
order made familiar by Daubigny and his school. 
French farmyards, stubble-thatched cottages, and 
all the rusticity which is so charming in nature 
draws continually group after group of artists 
from Paris to this particular spot at all seasons 
of the year. The homely side of country life has 
ever had a charm for city dwellers. Auvers is 
somewhat doubtfully stated as being the birth- 
place of Francois Villon — that prince of vaga- 
bonds. Usually Paris has been given this dis- 
tinction. 

Mery is an elevated little place of something 
less than fifteen hundred souls. It has a church 
of the thirteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth cen- 
turies, and a chateau which was constructed at 
the end of the fourteenth century by the Seigneur 
de Mery, Pierre d'Orgemont, grand chancellor of 
France. The domain was created a marquisat in 



By Seine and Oise 193 

1665. The famous banker, Samuel Bernard, it 
seems, became the occupant of the chateau in the 
reign of Louis XIV., and there received king 
and court. 

On a certain occasion, as the season had ad- 
vanced toward the chill of winter, the opulent 
seigneur made great fires of acacia wood. The 
king, who was present, said courteously to his 
host: " Know you well, Samuel, it is not possi- 
ble for me to do this in my palace ; ' ' from which 
we may infer that it was a luxury which even 
kings appreciated. 

There were no river obstructions to the free 
passage of our little craft between Pontoise and 
L 'Isle- Adam, above Auvers. We were going by 
easy stages now, even the long tows of grain and 
coal-laden barges were gaining on us, for we were 
straggling disgracefully and stopping at almost 
every kilometre stone. 

We tied up at Auvers, " Daubigny's Country," 
as we called it, and stayed for the night at the 
Hostellerie du Nord, a not very splendid estab- 
lishment, but one with a character all its own. 
Auvers, and its neighbour Mery, together form 
one of the most delightful settlements in which 
to pass a summer, near to Paris, that could be 
possibly imagined, but with this proviso, that on 
Sunday one could take a day in town, for then 
tout le monde, the proprietor of the Hostellerie 
du Nord tells you, comes out to breathe the artis- 
tic atmosphere of Daubigny. How much they 



194 The Automobilist Abroad 

really care for Daubigny or his artistic atmos- 
phere is a question. 

At such times the tiny garden and the dining- 
room of the Hostellerie attempt to expand them- 
selves to accommodate a hundred and fifty guests, 
whereas their capacity is perhaps forty. Some- 
thing very akin to pandemonium takes place ; it 
is amusing, no doubt, but it is not comfortable. 
Nothing ever goes particularly awry here, how- 
ever ; M. T , the patron, is too good a manager 

for that, and a popular one, too, to judge from 
his Salon d' Exposition, which is hung about with 
a couple of hundred pictures presented by his ad- 
miring painter guests from time to time. The 
viands are bountiful and splendidly garnished 
and the consommations an premier choix. Then 
there are the occupants of " les petit s menages ' 
to swoop down on your table for crumbs, — pig- 
eons only, — and in cages a score or more of 
canary-birds, and, as a sort of contrast, dogs and 
cats and fowls of all varieties of breed. 

It sounds rather uncomfortable, but we did not 
find it so at all, and, speaking from experience, 
it is one of the most enticing of the various 
" artists' resorts " known. 

It is but a short six kilometres to L 'Isle-Adam, 
and it was ten the next morning before we em- 
barked. It is a small town mostly given over to 
suburban houses of Paris brokers and merchants. 
It is an attractive enough town as a place of resi- 
dence, but of works of artistic worth it has prac- 



By Seine and Oise 195 

tically none, if we except the not very splendid 
fifteenth-century church. 

The largest of the islands here, just above the 
lock, was formerly occupied by the chateau of the 
Prince de Conti. It was destroyed at the Revo- 
lution, but its place has been taken by a modern 
villa whose gardens are kept up with remarkable 
skill and care, albeit it is nothing but a villa 
coquette on a large scale. L 'Isle-Adam received 
its name from the Connetable Adam who first 
built a chateau here in 1069. 

The Foret de PIsle-Adam is one of those noble 
woods in which the north of France abounds. 
Like the Foret de Ermenonville, Compiegne, and 
Chantilly it is beautifully kept, with great roads 
running straight and silent through avenues of 
oaks. 

The Chateau de Cassan, but a short distance 
into the Foret, has a wonderful formal garden, 
laid out after the English manner and ranking 
with the parks of the Trianon and Ermenonville. 

After L 'Isle-Adam we did not stop, except for 
the lock at Eougemont, till the smoke-stacks and 
factory-belchings of Creil loomed up before us 
thirty kilometres beyond. 

Creil is commercial, very commercial, and is a 
railway junction like Clapham Junction or South 
Chicago, — no, not quite ; nowhere else, on top 
of the green earth, are there quite such atrocious 
monuments to man's lack of artistic taste. It is 
a pity Creil is so banal on close acquaintance, 
for it is bejewelled with emerald hills and a tiny 



196 The Automobilist Abroad 

belt of silvery water which, in the savage days 
of long ago, must have given it preeminence 
among similar spots in the neighbourhood. 

Just above is Pont St. Maxence, delightfully 
named and delightfully placed, with a picture 
church of the best of Renaissance architecture 
and an atmosphere which made one want to linger 
within the confines of the town long after his 
allotted time. We stayed nearly half a day; we 
ate lunch in a little restaurant in the shadow of 
the bridge; we bought and sent off picture post- 
cards, and we took snap-shots and strolled about 
and gazed at the little gem of a place until all the 
gamins in town were following in our wake. 

Compiegne was next in our itinerary. We knew 
Compiegne, from the shore, as one might say, 
having passed and repassed it many times, and 
we knew all its charms and attractions, or thought 
we did, but we were not prepared for the effect 
of the rays of the setting sun on the quaintly ser- 
rated sky-line of the roof-tops of the city, as we 
saw it from the river. 

It was bloody red, and the willows along the 
river's bank were a dim purply melange of all the 
refuse of an artist's palette. Compiegne has 
many sides, but its picturesque sunset side is the 
most theatrical grouping of houses and landscape 
we had seen for many a long day. 

Here at Compiegne the vigour of the Oise ends. 
Above it is a weakly, purling stream, the greater 
part of the traffic going by the Canal Lateral, 
while below it broadens out into a workable, in- 



By Seine and Oise 197 

dustrial sort of a waterway which is doing its 
best to contribute its share to the prosperity of 
France. 

We learn here, as elsewhere, where it has been 
attempted, that the hand of man cannot irretriev- 
ably make or reclaim the course of a river. De- 
prived of its natural bed and windings, it will 
always form new ones of its own making in con- 
formity to the law of nature. The attempt was 
made to straighten the course of the Oise, but in 
a very short time the latent energies of the 
stream, more forceful than were supposed, made 
fresh windings and turnings, the ultimate devel- 
opment of which was found to very nearly ap- 
proximate those which had previously been done 
away with, and so the Canal Lateral, which com- 
mences at Compiegne, was built. 

Compiegne 's attractions are many, its gener- 
ally well-kept and prosperous air, its most excel- 
lent hotels (two of them, though we bestowed our 
august patronage on the Hotel de France), its 
chateau of royal days of Louis XV., and its Hotel 
de Ville. 

Stevenson, in his " Inland Voyage," has said 
that what charmed him most at Compiegne was 
the Hotel de Ville. Truly this will be so with any 
who have a soul above electric trams and the art 
nouveau; it is the most dainty and lovable of 
Renaissance Hotels de Ville anywhere to be seen, 
with pignons, and gables, and niches with figures 
in them jutting out all over it. 

Then there is the novel and energetic little 



198 The Automobilist Abroad 

jaquemart, the little bronze figures of which 
strike the hours and even the halves and quarters. 
There is not a detail of this charming building, 
inside or out, which will not be admired by all. 
It is far and away more interesting in its appeal 
than the chateau itself. 

Our next day's journey was to Noyon. We 
were travelling by boat, to be sure, but a good 
part of the personnel of the hotel, including the 
hostler, and the bus-driver, whose business was at 
the station, came down to see us off. Like a bird 
in a cage he gazed at us with longing eyes, and 
once let fall the remark that he wished he had 
nothing else to do but sit in the bow of a boat and 
" twiddle a few things " to make it go faster. 
He overlooked entirely the things that might 
happen, such as having to pull your boat up on 
shore and pull out the weeds and rubbish which 
were stopping your intake pipe, or climb over- 
board yourself and disentangle water-plants from 
your propeller, if indeed it had not lost a blade 
and you were forced to be ignominiously towed 
into the next large town. 

It looks all very delightful travelling about in 
a dainty and facile little canot-automobile, and for 
our part we were immensely pleased with this, 
our first, experience of so long a voyage. Noth- 
ing had happened to disturb the tranquillity of 
our journey, not a single mishap had delayed us, 
and we had not a quarrel with a bargeman or an 
eclusier, as we had been told we should have. 
We were in luck, and though we only averaged 



By Seine and Oise 199 

from fifty to sixty kilometres a day, we were all 
day doing it, and it seemed two hundred. 

We lunched at Ribecourt and struck the most 
ponderously named hotel we had seen in all our 
travels, and it was good in spite of its weight. 
" Le Courrier des Pays et des Trois Jambons," 
or something very like it, was its name, and its 
patronne was glad to see us, and killed a fowl 
especially on our account, culled some fresh let- 
tuce in the garden, and made a dream of a rum 
omelette, which she said was the national dish of 
America. It isn't, as most of us know, but it 
was a mighty good omelette, nevertheless, and the 
rum was sufficiently fiery to give it a zest. 

We spent that night at Noyon of blessed mem- 
ory. Noyon is not down in the itineraries of many 
guide-book tourists, which is a pity for them. It 
is altogether the most unspoiled old-world town 
between the He de France and the Channel ports 
of Boulogne and Calais through which so many 
Anglo-Saxon travellers enter. It is off the beaten 
track, though, and that accounts for it. Blessed 
be the tourist agencies which know nothing 
beyond their regular routes, and thus leave some 
forgotten and neglected tourist-points yet to be 
developed. 

The majesty of Noyon 's Cathedral of Notre 
Dame is unequalled in all the world. The grim 
towers rise boldly without ornament or decoration 
of any kind, and are cowled by a peculiarly 
strange roofing. The triple porch is denuded of 



200 The Automobilist Abroad 

its decorative statues, and there is a rank Renais- 
sance excrescence in the rear which is unseemly, 
but for all that, as a mediaeval religious monument 
of rank, it appeals to all quite as forcibly as the 
brilliantly florid cathedral at Beauvais, or the 
richly proud Amiens, its nearest neighbours of 
episcopal rank. 

We did not sit in front of the Hotel du Nord 
at Noyon, as did Stevenson, and hear the " sweet 
groaning of the organ " from the cathedral door- 
way, but we experienced all the emotions of which 
he wrote in his " Inland Voyage," and we were 
glad we came. 

The Hotel de France and the Hotel du Nord 
share the custom of the ever-shifting traffic of 
voyageurs at Noyon. The latter is the " auto- 
mobile " hotel, and accordingly possesses many 
little accessories which the other establishment 
lacks. Otherwise they are of about the same 
value, and in either you will, unless you are a 
very heavy sleeper, think that the cathedral-bells 
were made to wake the dead, so reverberant are 
their tones and so frequent their ringing. 

It was Stevenson's wish that, if he ever em- 
braced Catholicism, he should be made Bishop of 
Noyon. Whether it was the simple magnitude 
of its quaint, straight-lined cathedral, or the gen- 
erally charming and riant aspect of the town, one 
does not know, but the sentiment was worthy of 
both the man and the place. 

" Les affaires sont les affaires," as the French 



By Seine and Oise 



201 



say, and business called us to Paris; so, after a 
happy ten days on the Seine and Oise, we cut our 
voyage short with the avowed intention of some 
day continuing it. 



n 




^p 



Nautical Insignia, Touring Club de France 




gfe £?g%z? ^ ^ jVowth 





We left Paris by the ghastly route leading out 
through the plain of Gennevilliers, where Paris 
empties her sewage and grows asparagus, passing 
St. Denis and its royal catacombs of the ancient 
abbey, and so on to Pontoise, all over as vile a 
stretch of road as one will find in the north of 
France, always excepting the suburbs of St. Ger- 
main. 

Pontoise is all very well in its way, and is by 
no means a dull, uninteresting town, but we had 
no thoughts for it at the moment ; indeed, we had 
no thoughts of anything but to put the horrible 
suburban Paris pave as far behind us as we could 
before we settled down to enjoyment. 

At Pontoise we suddenly discovered that we 
were on the wrong road. So much for not know- 
ing our way out of town — twenty-five kilometres 
of axle-breaking cobblestones ! 

202 



The Road to the North 203 

We had some consolation in knowing that it was 
equally as bad by any northern road out of Paris, 
so we only had the trouble of making a twenty- 
kilometre detour through the valley of the Oise, 
by our old haunts of Auvers and L 'Isle- Adam to 
Chantilly and Senlis. 

We got our clue to the itinerary of the road to 
the north from a view of an old poster issued by 
the " Messageries Roy ales " just previous to the 
Revolution (a copy of which is given elsewhere 
in this book). 

Many were the times we, and all well-habituated 
travellers in France, had swung from Calais to 
Paris by train, with little thought indeed as to 
what lay between. True, we had, more than once, 
11 stopped off " at Amiens and Abbeville to see 
their magnificent churches, and we had spent a 
long summer at Etaples and Montreuil-sur-Mer, 
two " artists' haunts " but little known to the 
general traveller; but we never really knew the 
lay of the land north of Paris, except as we had 
got it from the reading of Dumas, Stevenson's 
" Inland Voyage," and the sentimental journey - 
ings of the always delightful Sterne. 

We made Chantilly our stop for lunch, en route 
to Senlis. We ought not to have done this, for 
what with the loafing horse-jockeys in the cafes, 
and the trainers and " cheap sports " hanging 
about the hotels, Chantilly does not impress one 
as the historical shrine that it really is. 

Chantilly is sporty, tres sportive, as the French 
call it, as is inevitable of France's most popular 



204 The Automobilist Abroad 

race-track, and there is an odour of America, Ire- 
land, and England over all. How many jockeys 
of these nationalities one really finds at Chantilly 
the writer does not know, but, judging from the 
alacrity with which the hotels serve you ham and 
eggs and the cafe waiters respond to a demand 
for whiskey (Scotch, Irish, or American), it may 
be assumed that the alien population is very 
large. 

We had our lunch at the Hotel du Grand Conde, 
which is marked with three stars in the automo- 
bile route-books. This means that it is expensive, 
— and so we found it. It was a good enough hotel 
of its kind, but there was nothing of local colour 
about it. It might have been at Paris, Biarritz, 
or Monte Carlo. 

The great attractions of Chantilly are the 
chateau and park and the collections of the Due 
d'Aumale, famed alike in the annals of history 
and art. We were properly appreciative, and 
only barely escaped being carried off by our guide 
to see the stables — as if we had not suffered 
enough from the horse craze ever since we had 
struck the town. 

The most we would do was to admire the park 
and the ramifications of its paths and alleys which 
dwindled imperceptibly into the great Foret de 
Chantilly itself. The forest is one of those vast 
tracts of wildwood which are so plentifully be- 
sprinkled all over France. Their equals are not 
known elsewhere, for they are crossed and re- 
crossed in all directions by well-kept carriage 



The Road to the North 205 

roads where automobilists will be troubled neither 
by dust nor glaring sunlight. They are the very 
ideals of roads, the forest roads of France, and 
their length is many thousands of kilometres. 

Senlis is but eight kilometres from Chantilly. 
We had no reason for going there at all, except 
to have a look at its little-known, but very beauti- 
ful, cathedral, and to get on the real road to the 
north. 

We spent the night at Senlis, for we had 
become fatigued with the horrible pave of the 
early morning, the sightseeing of the tourist 
order which we had done at Chantilly, and the 
eternal dodging of race-horses being exercised 
all through the streets of the town and the roads 
of the forest. 

" Monsieur descend-il a V Hotel du Grand 
Monarquef " asked a butcher's boy of us, as we 
stopped the automobile beneath the cathedral 
tower to get our bearings. He was probably 
looking for a little commission on our hotel-bill 
for showing us the way; but, after all, this is a 
legitimate enough proposition. We told him 
frankly no; that we were looking for the Hotel 
des Arenes; but that he knew nothing of. An- 
other, more enterprising, did, and we drove our 
automobile into the court of a tiny little commer- 
cial-looking hotel, and were soon strolling about 
the town free from further care for the day. The 
hotel was ordinary enough, neither good nor bad, 
comme 'ci, comme ga, the French would call it, — 
but they made no objection to getting up at six 



206 The Automobilist Abroad 

o'clock the next morning and making us fresh 
coffee which was a dream of excellence. This is 
a good deal in its favour, for the coffee of the 
ordinary French country hotel — in the north, in 
particular — -is fearfully and wonderfully made, 
principally of chicory. 

Sentiment would be served, and from Senlis we 
struck across forty kilometres to what may be 
called the Dumas Country, Crepy-en-Valois and 
Villers-Cotterets. Here was a little-trodden 
haunt which all lovers of romance and history 
would naturally fall in love with. 

Crepy is a snug, conservative little town where 
life goes on in much the same way that it did 
in the days when Alexandre Dumas was a clerk 
here in a notary's office, before he descended 
upon the Parisian world of letters. His " Me- 
moires " tell the story of his early experiences 
here in his beloved Valois country. It is a charm- 
ing biographical work, Dumas 's " Memoires," 
and it is a pity it is not better known to English 
readers. Dumas tells of his journey by road, 
from the town of his birth, Villers-Cotterets, to 
Crepy, with his world's belongings done up in 
a handkerchief on a stick, " in bulk not more 
grand than the luggage of a Savoyard when he 
leaves his native mountain home." 

Crepy has a delightfully named and equally ex- 
cellent hotel in the " Trois Pigeons," and one 
may eat of real country fare and be happy and 
forget all about the ham and eggs and bad whis- 
key of Chantilly in the contemplation of omelettes 



The Road to the North 207 

and chickens and fresh, green salads, such as only 
the country innkeeper in France knows how to 
serve. Crepy has a chateau, too, a relic of the 
days when the town was the capital of a petit 
gouvernement belonging to a younger branch of 
the royal family of France in the fourteenth cen- 
tury. The chateau is not quite one 's ideal of what 
a great mediaeval chateau should be, but it is 
sufficiently imposing to give a distinction to the 
landscape, and is in every way a very representa- 
tive example of the construction of the time. 

The great Route Nationale to the north runs 
through Crepy to-day, as did the Route Royale 
of the days of the Valois. It is eighteen kilo- 
metres from Crepy to Villers-Cotterets, Dumas 's 
birthplace. The great romancer describes it with 
much charm and correctness in the early pages of 
" The Taking of the Bastile." He calls it " a 
little city buried in the shade of a vast park 
planted by Francois I. and Henri II." It is a 
place ever associated with romance and history, 
and, to add further to its reputation, it is but a 
few kilometres away from La Ferte-Milon, where 
Racine was born, and only eight leagues from 
Chateau-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine. 

We had made up our minds to breathe as much 
of the spirit and atmosphere of Villers-Cotterets 
as was possible in a short time, and accordingly 
we settled down for the night at the Hotel Alex- 
andre Dumas. The name of the hotel is unusual. 
There may be others similar, but the writer does 
not recall them at this moment. It was not bad, 



208 The Automobilist Abroad 

and, though entitled to be called a grand estab- 
lishment, it was not given to pomposity or pre- 
tence, and we parted with regret, for we had been 
treated most genially by the proprietor and his 
wife, and served by a charming young maid, who, 
we learned, was the daughter of the house. It was 
all in the family, and because of that everything 
was excellently done. 

There are fragments of a royal chateau here, 
begun by Frangois I. in one of his building manias. 
His salamanders and the three crescents of 
Diane de Poitiers still decorate its walls, and 
accordingly it is a historical shrine of the first 
rank, though descended in these later days to use 
as a poorhouse. 

The chateau and forest of Villers-Cotterets 
were settled upon Monsieur le Grand by Louis 
XIV., after they had sheltered many previous 
royal loves, but in the days of the later monarchy, 
that of Philippe Egalite, the place was used 
merely as a hunting rendezvous. 

The Dumas birthplace is an ordinary enough 
and dismal-looking building from the street. As 
usual in France, there is another structure in the 
rear, the real birthplace, no doubt, but one gets 
only a glimpse through the open door or gate. 
Carrier-Belleus's fine statue of Dumas, erected 
here in 1885, is all that a monument of its class 
should be, and is the pride of the local inhabitant, 
who, when passing, never tires of stopping and 
gazing at its outlines. This may be a little ex- 
aggeration, but there is a remarkable amount of 



The Road to the North 209 

veneration bestowed upon it by all dwellers in 
the town. 

We went from Villers-Cotterets direct to Sois- 
sons, the home of the beans of that name. We 
do not know these medium-sized flat beans as 
soissons in America and England; to us they 
are merely beans; but as soissons they are known 
all over France, and in the mind and taste of 
the epicure there is no other bean just like them. 
This may be so or not, but there is no possible 
doubt whatever but that " soissons au beurre ' 
is a ravishing dish which one meets with too in- 
frequently, even in France, and this in spite of 
the millions of kilos of them which reach the 
markets through the gateway of the town of Sois- 
sons. 

Soissons undoubtedly has a good hotel. How 
could it be otherwise in such a food-producing 
centre ? We were directed, however, by a commis- 
voyageur whom we had met at Villers-Cotterets, 
not to think of a hotel at Soissons, if we were 
only to stop for lunch, but to go to the railway 
restaurant. Of all things this would be the most 
strange for an automobilist, but we took his ad- 
vice, for he said he knew what he was talking 
about. 

The " Buffet " at the railway station at Sois- 
sons is not the only example of a good railway 
eating-house in France, but truly it is one of the 
best. It is a marvellously conducted establish- 
ment, and you eat your meals in a beautifully 
designed, well-kept apartment, with the viands 



210 The Automobilist Abroad 

of the country of the best and of great variety. 
Soissons au beurre was the piece de resistance, 
and there was poulet au casserole, an omelette au 
rhum, a crisp, cold lettuce salad, and fruits and 
' ' biscuits ' ' galore to top off, with wine and bread 
a discretion and good coffee and cognac for ten 
sous additional, the whole totalling three francs 
fifty centimes. We were probably the first auto- 
mobilists on tour who had taken lunch at the rail- 
way restaurant at Soissons. Perhaps we may not 
be the last. 

It was but a short detour of a dozen or fifteen 
kilometres to visit the romantic Chateau de Coucy, 
one of the few relics of mediaevalism which still 
look warlike. It is more or less of a ruin, but it 
has been restored in part, and, taken all in all, 
is the most formidable thing of its kind in exist- 
ence. It rises above the old walled town of 
Coucy-le-Chateau in quite the fashion that one 
expects, and, from the platform of the donjon, 
there spreads out a wonderful view over two deep 
and smiling valleys which, as much as the thick- 
ness of the chateau walls, effectually protected 
the occupants from a surprise attack. 

The thirteenth century saw the birth of this, 
perhaps the finest example still remaining of 
France 's feudal chateaux, and, barring the effects 
of an earthquake in 1692, and an attempt by 
Richelieu to blow it up, the symmetrical outlines 
of its walls and roofs are much as they always 
were. 

Its founder was Enguerrand III. de Coucy, who 



The Road to the North 211 

took for his motto these boastful words — which, 
however, he and his descendants justified when- 
ever occasion offered: 

" Roi je ne suis, 
Prince, ni Comte aussi, 
Je suis le Sire de Coucy." 

We left Coucy rejoicing, happy and content, 
expecting to reach Laon that night. We had 
double-starred Laon in our itinerary, because it 
was one of those neglected tourist-points that we 
always made a point of visiting when in the neigh- 
bourhood. 

Laon possesses one of the most remarkable 
cathedrals of Northern France, but its hotels are 
bad. We tried two and regretted we ever came, 
except for the opportunity of marvelling at the 
commanding site of the town and its cathedral. 

The long zigzag road winding up the hill offers 
little inducement to one to run his automobile 
up to the plateau upon which sits the town proper. 
It were wiser not to attempt to negotiate it if 
there were any way to avoid it. We solved the 
problem by putting up at a little hotel opposite 
the railway station (its name is a blank, being 
utterly forgotten) where the commis-voyageur 
goes when he wants a meal while waiting for the 
next train. He seems to like it, and you do cer- 
tainly get a good dinner, but, not being commis- 
voyageurs, merely automobilists, we were charged 
three prices for everything, and accordingly 
every one is advised to risk the dangerous and 



212 The Automobilist Abroad 

precipitous road to the upper town rather than 
be blackmailed in this way. 

Laon's cathedral, had it ever been carried out 
according to the original plans, would have been 
the most stupendously imposing ecclesiastical 
monument in Northern France. Possibly the task 
was too great for accomplishment, for its stones 
and timbers were laboriously carried up the same 
zigzag that one sees to-day, and it never grew 
beyond its present half-finished condition. The 
year 1200 probably saw its commencement, and it 
is as thoroughly representative of the transition 
from Romanesque to Gothic as any other existing 
example of church building. 

On the great massive towers of Laon's cathe- 
dral is to be seen a most curious and unchurchly 
symbolism in the shape of great stone effigies of 
oxen, pointing north, east, south, and west. There 
is no religious significance, we are told, but they 
are a tribute to the faithful services of the oxen 
who drew the heavy loads of building material 
from the plain to the hilltop. 

We had taken a roundabout road to the north, 
via Laon, merely to see the oxen of the cathedral 
and to get swindled for our lunch at that unspeak- 
able little hotel. The one was worth the time and 
trouble, the other was not. We left town the same 
night headed north, in the direction of Arras, via 
St. Quentin, anciently one of the famous walled 
towns of France, but now a queer, if picturesque, 
conglomeration of relics of a historical past and 
modern business affairs. 



The Road to the North 213 

It was Sunday, and well into the afternoon, 
when we got away from Laon, but the peasant, 
profiting by the fair harvest days, was working in 
the fields as if he never had or would have a holi- 
day. Unquestionably the peasant and labouring 
class in France is hard-working, at his daily task 
and at his play, for when he plays he also plays 
hard. This, the eternal activity of the peasant 
or labourer, whatever his trade, and the worked- 
over little farm-holdings, with their varied crops, 
all planted in little bedquilt patches, are the chief 
characteristics of the French countryside for the 
observant stranger. 

We crossed the Oise at La Fere, La Fere of 
wicked memory, as readers of Stevenson will re- 
call. Nothing went very badly with us, but all 
the same the memory of Stevenson's misadven- 
ture at his hotel made us glad we were not stop- 
ping there. 

We passed now innumerable little towns and 
villages clinging to red, brown, and green hill- 
sides, with here and there a thatched cottage of 
other days, for, in the agglomerations, as the 
French government knows the hamlets and towns, 
it is now forbidden to thatch or rethatch a roof; 
you must renew it with tiles or slates when the 
original thatch wears out. 

Soon after passing La Fere one sees three hill- 
top forts, for we are now in more or less strategic 
ground, and militarism is rampant. 

St. Quentin has been the very centre of a war- 
like maelstrom for ages, and the memory of blood 



214 The Automobilist Abroad 

and fire lies over all its history, though to-day, 
as we entered its encumbered, crooked streets, 
things looked far from warlike. 

We had our choice of the Hotel du Cygne or the 
Hotel du Commerce at St. Quentin, and chose the 
latter as being nearer the soil, whereas the former 
establishment is blessed with electric lights, a 
calorifere, and a "bar" — importing the word 
and the institution from England or America. 

We found nothing remarkable in the catering 
of the Hotel du Commerce. It was good enough 
of its kind, but not distinctive, and we got beer 
served with our dinner, instead of wine or cider. 
If you want either of the latter you must pay 
extra. We were in the beer region, not the cider 
country or the wine belt. It was the custom, and 
was not being " sprung " on us because we were 
automobilists. This we were glad to know after 
our experience at Laon. 

St. Quentin possesses a famous Gothic church, 
known to all students of Continental architecture, 
and there is a monument of the siege of 1557, 
which is counted another " sight," though strictly 
a modern work. 

At St. Quentin one remarks the Canal de St. 
Quentin, another of those inland waterways of 
France which are the marvel of the stranger and 
the profit of the inhabitant. This particular canal 
connects France with the extraterritorial com- 
merce of the Pays Bas, and runs from the Somme 
to the Scheldt, burrowing through hillsides with 
tunnels, and bridging gaps and valleys with via- 



The Road to the North 215 

ducts. One of these canal-tunnels, at Riqueval, 
has a length of nearly four miles. 

We worried our way out through the crooked 
streets of St. Quentin at an early hour the next 
morning, en route for Arras, via Cambrai. Forty- 
two kilometres of " ond. dure.," but otherwise 
excellent roadway, brought us to Cambrai. (For 
those who do not read readily the French route- 
book directions the above expression is trans- 
lated as " rolling and difficult.") 

It matters little whether the roadways of 
France are marked rolling and serpentine, or 
hilly and winding, the surfaces are almost invari- 
ably excellent, and there is nothing met with 
which will annoy the modern automobile or its 
driver in the least, always excepting foolish peo- 
ple, dogs, and children. For the last we some- 
times feel sorry and take extra precautions, but 
the others are too intolerant to command much 
sympathy. 

Cambrai was burned into our memories by the 
recollection that Fenelon was one-time bishop of 
the episcopal see, and because it was the city 
of the birth and manufacture of cambric, most of 
which, since its discovery, has gone into the mak- 
ing of bargain-store handkerchiefs. 

Cambrai possessed twelve churches previous to 
the Revolution, but only two remain at the pres- 
ent day, and they are unlovely enough to belong 
to Liverpool or Sioux City. 

We had some difficulty in finding a hotel at 
Cambrai. Our excellent " Guide-Michelin " had 



216 The Automobilist Abroad 

for the moment gone astray in the tool-box, and 
there was nothing else we could trust. We left 
the automobile at the shop of a mecanicien for 
a trifling repair while we hunted up lunch. (Cost 
fifteen sous, with no charge for housing the 
machine. Happy, happy automobilists of France ; 
how much you have to be thankful for!) 

The Mouton Blanc, opposite the railway station 
at Cambrai, gave us a very good lunch, in a 
strictly bourgeois fashion, including the sticky, 
bitter biere du Nord. We paid two francs fifty 
centimes for our repast and went away with a 
good opinion of Cambrai, though its offerings for 
the tourist in the way of remarkable sights are 
few. 

Cambrai to Arras was a short thirty kilometres. 
We covered them in an hour and found Arras all 
that Cambrai was not, though both places are 
printed in the same size type in the railway time- 
tables and guide-books. 

Arras has a combined Hotel de Ville and belfry 
which puts the market-house and belfry of 
Bruges quite in the shade from an impressive 
architectural point of view. There is not the 
quiet, splendid severity of its more famous com- 
peer at Bruges, but there is far more luxuriance 
in its architectural form, and, at any rate, it was 
a surprise and a pleasure to find that any such 
splendid monument were here. 

The Spanish invasion of other days has left its 
mark all through Flanders, and here at Arras the 
florid Renaissance architecture of the Hotel de 



The Road to the North 217 

Ville and the vaults and roofs of the market- 
square are manifestly exotics from a land strange 
to French architectural ways. 

Arras, with its quaint old arcaded market-place, 
is a great distributing-point for cereals. A mil- 
lion of francs' worth in value changes hands here 
in a year, and the sale, in small lots, out in the 
open, is a survival of the moyen age when the 
abbes of a neighbouring monastery levied toll for 
the privilege of selling on the market-place. To- 
day the toll-gatherer, he who collects the small 
fee from the stall-owners, is still known as the 
Abbe. 

Arras is quaint and interesting, and withal a 
lively, progressive town, where all manner of 
merchandizing is conducted along very business- 
like lines. You can buy sewing-machines and 
agricultural machinery from America at Arras, 
and felt hats and orange marmalade (which the 
Frenchman calls, mysteriously, simply, " Dun- 
dee ") from Britain. 

To Douai, from Cambrai, was another hour's 
run. Douai has a Hotel de Ville and belfry, too, 
which were entirely unlooked for. Quaint, re- 
markable, and the pet and pride of the inhabit- 
ant, the bells of the belfry of Bible-making Douai 
ring out rag-time dances and Sousa marches. 
Such is the rage for up-to-dateness ! 

There is a goodly bit to see at Douai in the way 
of ecclesiastical monuments, but the chief attrac- 
tion, that which draws strangers to the place, is 
the July " Fete de Gayant," at which M. and 



218 The Automobilist Abroad 

Mme. Gayant (giant), made of wickerwork and 
dressed more or less a la mode, are promenaded 
up and down the streets to the tune of the " Air 
de Gayante." All this is in commemoration of 
an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city by 
Louis XI. in 1479. The fete has been going on 
yearly ever since, and shows no signs of dying 
out, as does the Guy Fawkes celebration in Eng- 
land. 

"We were now going through France's " black 
country," the coal-fields of the north, and the 
gaunt scaffolds of the mine-pits dotted the land- 
scape here and there, as they do in Pennsylvania 
or the Midlands of England. They did not espe- 
cially disfigure the landscape, but gave a mod- 
ern note of industry and prosperity which was as 
marked as that of the farmyards of the peasants 
and high-farmers of Normandy or La Beauce. 
France is an exceedingly wealthy, and, what is 
more, a " self-contained " nation; and this fact 
should not be forgotten by the critics of what they 
like to call effete Europe. 

Bethune is in the heart of the coal country, and 
is not a particularly lovely town. It has a dream 
of an old-world hotel, though, and one may go a 
great deal farther and fare a great deal worse 
than at Bethune 's Hotel du Nord, a great ram- 
bling, stone Renaissance building, with heavy 
decorated window-frames, queer rambling stair- 
cases, and ponderous, beamed ceilings. 

It sits on a little Place, opposite an isolated 
belfry, from whose upper window there twinkles, 



The Road to the North 219 

at night, a little star of light, like a mariner's 
beacon. What it is all supposed to represent no 
one seems to know, but it is an institution which 
dies hard, and some one pays the expense of keep- 
ing it alight. A belfry is a very useful adjunct 
to a town. If the writer ever plans a modern 
city he will plant a belfry in the very centre, with 
four clock-faces on it, a sun-dial, a thermometer, 
and a peal of bells. You find all these things on 
the belfry of Bethune, and altogether it is the 
most picturesque, satisfying, and useful belfry 
the writer has ever seen. 

The food and lodging of the Hotel du Nord at 
Bethune are as satisfactory as its location, and 
we were content indeed to remain the following 
day in the dull little town, because of a torrential 
downpour which kept us house-bound till four in 
the afternoon. If one really wants to step back 
into the dark ages, just let him linger thirty-six 
hours as we did at Bethune. More would proba- 
bly drive him crazy with ennui, but this is just 
enough. 

The road to the north ended for us at Calais. 
How many know Calais as they really ought? 
To most travellers Calais is a mere guide-post 
on the route from England or France. 

Of less interest to-day, to the London tripper, 
than Boulogne and its debatable pleasures, Calais 
is a very cradle of history and romance. 

It was in October, 1775, that Sterne set out on 
his immortal ' ' sentimental journey. ' ' He put up, 
as the tale goes, at Dessein's Hotel at Calais (now 



220 The Automobilist Abroad 

pulled down), and gave it such a reputation among 
English-speaking people that its proprietor sud- 
denly grew rich beyond his wildest hopes. So 
much for the publicity of literature, which, since 
Sterne's days, has boomed soap, cigars, and auto- 
mobiles. 

Sterne's familiarity with France was born of 
experience. He had fallen ill in London while 
supervising the publication of some of his literary 
works and was ordered to the south of France by 
his physicians. He obtained a year's absence from 
his curacy, and borrowed twenty pounds from 
his friend Garrick (which history, or rumour, 
says he never repaid) and left for — of all places 
— Paris, where a plunge into the whirl of social 
dissipation nearly carried him off his feet. 

Sterne and Stevenson have written more charm- 
ingly of France and things French than any 
others in the English tongue, and if any one would 
like to make three little pilgrimages off the beaten 
track, by road or rail, by bicycle or automobile, 
let him follow the trail of Sterne in his " Senti- 
mental Journey," or Stevenson in his " Inland 
Voyage " and his " Travels with a Donkey." 
They do not follow the " personally conducted " 
tourist routes, but they give a much better idea 
of France to one who wants to see things for him- 
self. 

Charles Dibdin, too, " muddled away five 
months at Calais," to quote his own words. He 
arrived from England after a thirteen-hours ' 
passage in a gale of wind, in which he composed 



The Road to the North 221 

his most famous sea-song, " Blow High, Blow 
Low." Travellers across the Channel have been 
known to occupy thirteen hours on the passage 
since Dibdin's time, and seemingly, in the expe- 
rience of the writer, there is not a time when the 
words of the song might not apply. 

We had come to Calais for the purpose of 
crossing the Channel for a little tour awheel amid 
the natural beauties and historic shrines of Merry 
England. 

It takes fifty-five minutes, according to the 
Railway-Steamship time-cards, to make the pas- 
sage from Calais to Dover, but the writer has 
never been able to make one of these lightning 
passages. 

Automobiles are transported by the mail-boats 
only upon " special arrangements," information 
upon which point is given so vaguely that one sus- 
pects bribery and craft. 

We did not bite, but went over by the night 
cargo-boat, at least the automobile did, at a cost 
of a hundred francs. This is cheap or dear, ac- 
cording to the way you look at it. For the service 
rendered it is dear, for the accommodation to you 
it is, perhaps, cheap enough. At any rate, it is 
cheap enough when you want to get away from 
England again, its grasping hotel-keepers, and its 
persecuting police. 

Why do so many English automobilists tour 
abroad, Mr. British Hotel-keeper and Mr. Police 
Sergeant? One wonders if you really suspect. 



PART III 
ON BRITAIN'S ROADS 



SBafMWs^acf 



224 



CHAPTER I 



THE BATH ROAD 



The Bath road is in many ways the most famed 
main road out of London. Visions as varied as 
those of highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, boating 
at Maidenhead, the days of the " dandies " at 
Bath, and of John Cabot at Bristol flashed 
through our minds whenever we heard the Bath 
road mentioned, so we set out with a good-will 
on the hundred and eighteen mile journey to 
Bath. 

To-day the road's designation is the same as of 
yore, though Palmer's coaches, that in 1784 left 
London at eight in the morning and arrived at 
Bristol at eleven at night, have given way to au- 
tomobiles which make the trip in three hours. 
You can be three hours or thirty, as you please. 
We figured it out for thirty-six and lunched, 
dined, slept, and breakfasted en route, and felt 
the better for it. 

The real popularity of the Bath road and its 
supremacy in coaching circles a century and a 
quarter ago — a legacy which has been handed 
down to automobilists of to-day — was due to the 
initiative of one John Palmer, a gentleman of 

225 



226 The Automobilist Abroad 

property, who had opened a theatre at Bath, and 
was sorely annoyed at the delays he had to sub- 
mit to in obtaining star actors from London to 
appear on particular nights. Palmer was a man 
with a grievance, but he was also a man with 
ability and purpose. He travelled about, and 
made notes and observations, and organized a 
scheme by which coaching might be brought into 
a complete system; he memorialized the govern- 
ment, was opposed by the post-office authorities, 
abused, sneered at, laughed at, but not beaten; 
finally he gained the ear of William Pitt, who 
saw that there was more in the proposed plan 
than a mere experiment. On the 8th of August, 
1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from Lon- 
don to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen 
hours. That was the turning-point. The old 
lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the ir- 
responsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, 
and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, 
stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better 
horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, 
regular stages, marked by decent inns and com- 
fortable hostelries, and improved roads. The 
post-office made a contract with the coaching 
speculator — a very safe contract indeed — by 
which he was to have two and one-half per cent 
of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. 
This would have yielded twenty thousand pounds 
a year; so the government broke its agreement, 
refused to vote the payment, and compromised 
with Mr. Palmer and its own conscience, after the 



The Bath Road 227 

fashion of politicians of all time, by a grant of 
fifty thousand pounds. 

The Bath road traverses a section of England 
that is hardly as varied as would be a longer 
route from north to south, but, on the whole, it 
is characteristically English throughout, and is as 
good an itinerary as any by which to make one's 
first acquaintance with English days and English 
ways. 

Via Hammersmith, Kew Bridge, Brentford, 
and Hounslow was our way out of town, and a 
more awful, brain-racking, and discouraging 
start it would have been impossible to make. 
London streets are ever difficult to thread with 
an automobile, and when the operation is under- 
taken on a misty, moisty morning with what the 
Londoner knows as grease thick under foot and 
wheel, the process is fraught with the possibility 
of adventure. 

Out through Piccadilly and Knightsbridge was 
bad enough, but, by the time Hammersmith Broad- 
way, its trams and tram-lines and its butchers' 
and bakers' and milk carts, was reached and 
passed, it was as if one had been trying to claw 
off a lee shore in a gale, and driver and passen- 
gers alike felt exceeding limp and sticky. The 
Londoner who drives an automobile thinks noth- 
ing of it, and covers the intervening miles with a 
cool clear-headedness that is marvellous. We 
were new to automobiling in England, but we 
were fast becoming acclimated. 

On through Chiswick there were still the awful 



228 The Automobilist Abroad 

tram-lines, but the roadway improved and was 
wider and free from abrupt turns and twists. 
We congratulated ourselves that at last we had 
got clear of town, but we had reckoned beyond 
our better judgment, for we had forgotten that 
we had been told that Brentford was the most 
awful death-trap that the world has known for 
automobilists, cyclists, and indeed foot-passers as 
well We should have kept a little of our nerve 
by us, for we needed it when we got shut m 
between a brewer's dray, an omnibus, and an 
electric tram-car in Brentford's sixteen-foot 
" main road." It was like an interminable can- 
yon, gloomy, damp, and dangerous for all living 
things which passed its portals, this mam street 
of Brentford. For some miles, apparently, this 
same congestion of traffic continued, a tram-car 
ahead and behind you, drays, trucks, and carts 
all around you, and fool butchers' cart and milk 
cart drivers turning unexpected corners to the 
likely death of you and themselves. Here is an 
automobile reform which might well attract the 
attention of the authorities in England. The au- 
tomobile has as much right to be a road user as 
any other form of traffic, and, if the automobile 
is to be regulated as to its speed and progress, 
it is about time that the same regulations were 
applied also to other classes of traffic. 

We finally got out of Brentford and came to 
Hounslow, where suburban improvement has gone 
so far as to widen the roadway and put the two 
lines of tramway in the middle, allowing a free 



The Bath Road 229 

passage on either side. The wood pavement, 
which we had followed almost constantly since 
leaving London, soon disappeared, and, finally, so 
did the tramway. After perhaps fifteen miles we 
were at last approaching open country; at least 
Suburbia and perambulators had been left be- 
hind; and truck-gardens and market-wagons, 
often with sleepy drivers, had entered on the 
scene. Here was a new danger, but not so terrible 
as those we had left behind, and the poor, docile 
horse usually had sense enough to draw aside 
and let us pass, even if the beer-drowsy driver 
had not. 

We soon reached the top of Hounslow Heath, 
but there was scarcely a suggestion of the former 
romantic aspect which we had always connected 
with it. 

We made inquiries and learned that there was 
one old neighbouring inn, the " Green Man," ly- 
ing between the Bath and Exeter roads, which 
was a true relic of the past, and musty with the 
traditions of turnpike travellers and highwaymen 
of old. We found the "Green Man" readily 
enough, with a country yokel to point the way, for 
which he expected the price of a beer. In the 
palmy days of the robbing and murdering traffic 
of Hounslow Heath it was a convenient refuge 
for the Duvals and Turpins, and they made for 
it with a rush on occasion, secreting themselves 
in a hiding-place which can still be seen. 

This is in a little room on the left of the front 
door, and the entrance lies at the back of an old- 



230 The Automobilist Abroad 

fashioned fireplace. A hole leads to a passage 
which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to 
which there is ample room for anybody to descend. 
The local wiseacres declare that there is, or was, 
a communication between this secret chamber 
and another famous highwayman's inn, the old 
" Magpie " directly on the Bath road, and that 
those who preyed on travellers used to bolt from 
one house to the other like hunted rabbits. No 
one seemingly has himself ever explored this 
mysterious subterranean passage. Beyond Houns- 
low, on the Bath road, one passes through 
Slough, leaving Windsor, Runnymede, and 
Datchet on the left, as properly belonging to the 
routine tours which one makes from London and 
calls simply excursions. 

The Thames is reached at Maidenhead, where 
up-river society plays a part which reminds one 
of the stage melodramas, except that there is real 
water and real boat-races. It is a pretty enough 
aspect up and down the river from the bridge at 
Maidenhead, but it is stagey and artificial. 

The hotels and restaurants of Maidenhead 
make some pretence of catering to automobilists, 
and do it fairly well, after a suburban fashion, 
but there is nothing of the flavour or sentiment 
of the old inn-keeping days, neither are any of 
the establishments at all what the touring auto- 
mobilist (as distinct from the promenading, or 
half-day excursion variety) expects and demands. 

The Bath road runs straight on through Twy- 
ford to Beading, but we made a detour via Great 



230 The Automobilist Abroad 

fashioned fireplace. A hole leads to a passage 
which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to 
which there is ample room for anybody to descend. 
The local wiseacres declare that there is, or was, 
a communication between this secret chamber 
and another famous highwayman's urn, the old 
" Magpie " directly on the Bath road, and that 
those who preyed on travel!- I to bolt from 

one house to the other like hunted rabbits No 
one seemingly has himself ever explored this 
mysterious subterranean passage. Beyond Houns- 
low on the Bath road, one passes through 
Slough, leaving Windsor, Runnymede, and 
Datchet on the left, as properly belonging to the 
routine tours which one makes from London and 
«[rtE80AP^YnIHE THAMES 
The blames is reached at Maidenhead, where 
up-river society plays a part which reminds one 

that there is real 
lough 

the riv< <tee at 

ad, but gey and artificial. 

e hotels and restaurants of Maidenhead 
ike some pretence of catering to automobihsts, 
and do it fairly well, after a suburban fashion 
but there is nothing of the flavour or sentiment 
i inn-keeping days, neither are any ot 
hments at all what the touring auto- 
distinct from the promenading, or 
, arsion variety) expects and demands. 
.I runs straight on through Twy 
but we made a detour via Great 



The Bath Road 231 

Marlow and Henley, merely for the satisfaction 
of lunching at the " Red Lion Inn " at the latter 
place. The great social and sporting attractions 
of the Thames, the annual Henley regatta, had 
drawn us thither years ago, and we had enjoyed 
ourselves in the conventional manner, shouting 
ourselves hoarse over rival crews, lunching, pic- 
nic fashion, from baskets under the trees, and 
making our way back to town by the railway, 
amid a terrifying crush late at night. It was all 
very enjoyable, but once in a lifetime was quite 
enough. Now we were taking things easier. 

The traditions hanging around the old " Red 
Lion Inn," beside the bridge, probably account 
for its popularity, for certainly its present-day 
accommodations and catering are nothing remark- 
able, and the automobilist is looked upon with dis- 
favour. Why? This is hard to state. He is a 
good spender, the automobilist, and he comes fre- 
quently. All the same, the " Red Lion Inn " at 
Henley is one of those establishments marked 
down in the guide-books as " comfortable," and 
if its luncheon is a bit slow and stodgy, it is whole- 
some enough, and automobilists are generally 
blessed with good appetites. 

The Shenstone legend and the window-pane 
verses about finding " one's warmest welcome at 
an inn " were originally supposed to apply to this 
* ' inn at Henley. ' ' Later authorities say that they 
referred to an inn at Henley-in-Arden. Perhaps 
an automobilist, even, would find the latter more 
to his liking. The writer does not know. 



232 The Automobilist Abroad 

To Reading from Henley is perhaps a dozen 
miles, by a pretty river road which shows all the 
characteristic loveliness of the Thames valley 
about which poets have raved. By Shiplake Mill, 
Sonning, and Caversham Bridge one finally enters 
Reading. Reading is famous for the remains of 
an old abbey and for its biscuits, but neither at 
the time had any attractions for us. 

We made another detour from our path and 
followed the river-road to Abingdon. Pangborne 
(better described as Villadom) was passed, as 
was also Mapledurham, which Dick of William 
Morris's "Utopia" thought "a very pretty 
place." In fine it is a very pretty place, and the 
river hereabouts is quite at its prettiest. 

Since we had actually left towns and trams 
behind us we found the roadways good, but abom- 
inably circuitous and narrow, not to say danger- 
ous because of it. 

Soon Streatley Hill rose up before us. Streatley 
is one of those villages which have been pictured 
times innumerable. One often sees its winding 
streets, its picturesque cottages, its one shop, its 
old mill, " The Bull Inn," or its notorious bridge 
over the river to Goring. 

To cross this bridge costs six pence per wheel, 
be your conveyance a cart, carriage, bicycle, or 
motor-car, so that if an automobile requires any 
slight attention from the machinist, who quarters 
himself at Goring boat-house, it is appreciably 
cheaper to bargain with him to come to Streatley. 
Thus one may defeat the object of the grasping 



The Bath Road 233 

institution which, the lady toll-taker tells you, is 
responsible for the outrage, and not she herself. 
You may well believe her; she hardly looks as 
though she approved of the means which serve to 
keep her in her modest position. 

Streatley Hill, or rather the view from it, like 
the village itself, is famed alike by poet and 
painter. The following quatrain should be eulogy 
enough to warrant one's taking a rather stiff 
climb in the hope of experiencing, to a greater 
or a lesser degree, the same emotions : 

" When you're here, I'm told that you 
Should mount the Hill and see the view ; 
And gaze and wonder, if you'd do 
Its merits most completely." 

The poetry is bad, but the sentiment is sound. 

Goring is more of a metropolis than Streatley, 
but we did not visit the former town because of 
the atrocious toll-bridge charge. We were will- 
ing enough to make martyrs of ourselves in the 
good cause of the suppression of all such excessive 
charges to automobilists. 

On through Abingdon, and still following the 
valley of the Thames, we kept to Faringdon and 
Lechlade, where, at the latter place, at the subtly 
named " Trout Inn," we proposed passing the 
night. 

We did pass the night at the " Trout Inn," 
which has no accommodation for automobiles, 
except a populated hen-house, the general sleep- 
ing-place of most of the live stock of the land- 



234 The Automobilist Abroad 

lord, dogs, cats, ducks, and geese ; to say nothing 
of the original occupants — the hens. How much 
better they do things in France ! 

At any rate there is no pretence about the 
" Trout Inn " at Lechlade. We slept in a stuffy, 
diamond-paned little room with chintz curtains 
to windows, bed, and mantelpiece. We dined off 
of trout, beefsteak, and cauliflower, and drank 
bitter beer until midnight in the bar-parlour with 
a half-dozen old residents who told strange tales 
of fish and fishing. Here at least was the real 
thing, though the appointments of the inn were 
in no sense picturesque, and the landlord, instead 
of being a rotund, red-faced person, was a tall, 
thin reed of a man with a white beard who, in 
spite of his eighty odd years, is about as lively 
a proposition as one will find in the business in 
England. 

Mine host of " The Trout," silvered as the 
aspen, but straight as the pine, bears his eighty- 
two years lightly, and will tell you that he is still 
able to protect his fishing rights, which he owns 
in absolute fee on four miles of river-bank, 
against trespassers — and they are many. He 
sleeps, he says, with one eye open, and his gun 
by his side, and thinks nothing of a sally forth 
in the dark hours of night and exploding a charge 
in the direction of a marauder. He and his 
cronies of the tap-room, of an evening, before a 
glowing fire of logs, above which is the significant 
gun-rack (quite in old picture-book fashion), will 



The Bath Road 235 

give a deal of copy to an able writer who seeks 
atmosphere and local colour. 

Kelmscott, so identified with William Morris, is 
even less of the world of to-day than is its neigh- 
bour, Lechlade, and was one of the reasons for 
our coming here at all. 

The topographical surveys and books of refer- 
ence will tell one that it is a " chapelry, in the 
parish of Broadwell, Union of Faringdon, hun- 
dred of Bampton, county of Oxford; ,; that it 
is " two miles east of Lechlade and contains 179 
inhabitants; " and that " by measurement it con- 
tains 1,020 acres, of which 876 are arable and 
153 meadow and pasture." It is unlikely that the 
population has increased since the above descrip- 
tion ; the best authority claims that it has actually 
decreased, like so many of the small towns and 
villages of the countryside in England. 

Kelmscott Manor House was advertised for 
sale in 1871, a fact which Morris discovered quite 
by accident. Writing to his friend Faulkner he 
says : 

" I have been looking about for a house . . . 
my eye is turned now to Kelmscott, a little village 
two miles above Radcott Bridge — a Heaven on 
earth. ' ' 

The house is thirty miles or more from Oxford, 
by water, approached by a lane which leads from 
Lechlade just over St. John's Bridge, by the 
" Trout Inn." The railway now reaches Lech- 
lade, but this was not the case when Morris first 
found this " Heaven." Most likely he reached 



236 The Automobilist Abroad 

it by carriage from Faringdon, " by the grand 
approach over the hills of Berkshire." 

We regained the Bath road at Marlborough, 
after our excursion into the realms of Utopia, 
intending to reach Bath for lunch. The best laid 
plans of mice and mere motor-men ofttimes go 
awry, and we did not get to Bath until well on 
into the night. There was really no reason for 
this except an obstinate bougie (beg pardon, 
sparking-plug in English) which sparked beauti- 
fully in the open air, but which refused positively 
to give a glimmer when put in its proper place. 
We did not know this, or even suspect it at first, 
but this was what delayed us four hours, just 
before we reached Chippenham, where we stopped 
and lunched, through no choice of our own, for 
it was a bad lunch in every particular, and cost 
three shillings and sixpence a head. To add to 
the indignity, the local policemen came along and 
said we were making an obstruction, and insisted 
that we push the machine into the stable-yard, as 
if we were committing a breach of the law, when 
really it was only an opportunity for a ' ' bobby ' ' 
to show his authority. Happy England ! 

All the morning we had been running over typ- 
ical English roads and running well. There is 
absolutely no question but that the countryside 
of England is unequalled for that unique variety 
of picturesqueness which is characteristic of the 
land, but it lacks the grandeur that one finds in 
France, or indeed in most countries of Continental 
Europe. 



The Bath Road 237 

Crossing England thus, one gets the full force 
of Rider Haggard's remarks about the small 
farmer ; how, because he cannot get a small hold- 
ing, that can be farmed profitably, for his very 
own, he becomes a tenant, or remains always a 
labourer, never rising in the social scale. 

The peasant of Continental Europe may be 
poor and impoverished, may eat largely of bread 
instead of meat, and be forced to drink " thin 
wine ' ' instead of body-building beer, — as the 
economists in England put it, — but he has much 
to be thankful for, nevertheless. 

We stopped just before Beckhampton, at a 
puzzling crossroads, and asked a labourer of the 
fields if we were " right " for Chippenham. He 
stared blankly, doffed his hat with humility, but 
for a time answered never a word. He knew 
Calne, a town half a dozen miles away, for he 
occasionally walked in there for a drinking-bout 
on a heavier brand of beer than he could buy 
locally, but, though he had always heard of Chip- 
penham, he did not know whether it lay north, 
east, south, or west. This is deplorable, of 
course, for it was within a twenty-mile radius, 
but it is astonishing the frequency with which one 
meets this blankness in England when looking for 
information. There are tens of thousands like 
this poor fellow, and one may well defy Rider 
Haggard to make a " landed proprietor " out of 
such poor stuff. 

You do not always get what you ask for in 
France, but the peasant at least knows enough to 



238 The Automobilist Abroad 

tell you, "Oh! that's down in the Eure " or 
" Plus loin, par Id," and at any rate, you feel that 
he is a broad-gauge Frenchman through and 
through, whereas the English labourer of the 
fields is a very " little Englander " indeed. 

It is hard to believe on a bright May morning 
that here, in this blossoming, picturesque little 
village of Chippenham, on one bitterly cold morn- 
ing in the month of April, 1812, when the Bath 
coach reached its posting-house (the same, per- 
haps, Mr. Up-to-Date Automobilist, at which you 
have slept the night — worse luck), two of its out- 
side passengers were found frozen to death, and 
a third all but dead. The old lithographs which 
pictured the " Royal Mail " stuck in a snow-drift, 
and the unhappy passengers helping to dig it out, 
are no longer apocryphal in your mind after you 
have heard this bit of i ' real history, ' ' which hap- 
pened, too, in one of England's southern coun- 
ties. The romance of other days was often stern 
and uncomfortable reality of a most bitter kind. 

We left Chippenham, finally, very late in the 
day, lost our way at unsign-boarded and puzzling 
crossroads, had two punctures in a half a dozen 
miles, and ultimately reached the centre of Bath, 
over the North Parade Bridge — for which privi- 
lege we paid three pence, another imposition, 
which, however, we could have avoided had we 
known the devious turnings of the main road into 
town. 

In two days we had covered something like two 
hundred and fifty miles in and out of highways 



The Bath Road 239 

and byways, had followed the Thames for its 
entire boatable length, and had crossed England, 
— not a very great undertaking as automobile 
tours go, but a varied and enjoyable one in spite 
of the restrictions put upon the free passage of 
automobiles by the various governing bodies and 
the indifferent hotel-keepers. 

Bath and its attractions for visitors are quite 
the best things of their kind in all England, in 
spite of the fact that the attractions, the teas, the 
concerts, and the lectures — to say nothing of 
drinking and bathing in the waters — lack in- 
dividuality. 

We stayed the round of the clock at Bath, two 
rounds and a half, in fact, in that we did not leave 
until the second morning after our arrival, and 
absorbed as much of the spirit and association of 
the place as was possible, including sundry gal- 
lons of the bubbling spring- water. 

Bath has pleased many critical souls, James 
McNeill Whistler for one, who had no patience 
with other English resorts. It pleased us, too. It 
was so different. 

From Bath to Bristol is a dozen miles only, and 
the topographical characteristics change entirely, 
following the banks of the little river Avon. Bris- 
tol was a great seaport in days gone by, but to- 
day only coasters and colliers make use of its 
wharves. The town is charmingly situated, but 
it is unlovely, and, for the tourist, is only a step- 
ping-stone to somewhere else. The Automobile 
Club of Great Britain and Ireland directs one to 



240 The Automobilist Abroad 

the suburb of Clifton, or rather to Clifton Down, 
for hotel accommodation, but you can do much 
better than that by stopping at the Half Moon 
Hotel in the main street, a frankly commercial 
house, but with ample garage accommodation and 
good plain fare, of which roast little pig, boiled 
mutton, cauliflower, and mashed potatoes, with 
the ever recurring apple tart, form the principal 
items. 



9&> 




241 



CHAPTER II 



THE SOUTH COAST 



The south coast of England is ever dear to the 
Londoner who spends his week's end out of town. 
Here he finds the nearest whiff of salt-water 
breeze that he can call his own. He may go down 
the Thames on a Palace steamer to Southend, 
and he will have to content himself most of the 
way with a succession of mud-flats and eat winkles 
with a brassy pin when he gets there; he may 
even go on to Margate and find a fresh east wind 
which will blow the London fog out of his brain; 
but, until he rounds the Foreland, he will find 
nothing that will remind him in the least of his 
beloved Eastbourne, Brighton, and Worthing. 

The most popular south coast automobile run 
from London is to Brighton, fifty-two miles, via 
Croyden, Redhill, and Crawley. Many " week- 
enders ' ' make this trip nearly every Saturday to 
Monday in the year, and get to know every rut 
and stone in the roadway, and every degenerate 
policeman of the rapacious crew who hide in 
hedges and lie in wait for poor unfortunate 
automobilists who may have slipped down a slop- 
ing bit of clear roadway at a speed of twenty and 

243 



244 The Automobilist Abroad 

one-tenth miles per hour (instead of nineteen and 
nine-tenths), all figured out by rule of thumb and 
with the aid of a thirty-shilling stop-watch. 

" lis sont terribles, ces betes des gendarmes on 
trouve en Angleterre," said a terror-stricken 
French friend of ours who had been held up 
beyond Crawley for a " technical offence." 
Nothing was said against a drunken drayman who 
backed his wagon up against our friend's mud- 
guard ten miles back, and smashed it beyond re- 
pair. Justice, thy name is not in the vocabulary 
of the English policeman sent out by his sergeant 
to keep watch on automobilists ! 

Our road to the sea was by Rochester, Canter- 
bury, and Dover, in the first instance, following 
much the itinerary of Chaucer's pilgrims. 

Southwark's Tabard Inn exists to-day, in name 
if not in spirit, and it was easy enough to take 
it for our starting-point. Getting out of London 
to the southeast is not as bad as by the north- 
west, but in all conscience it is bad enough, 
through Deptford and its docks, and Greenwich 
and Woolwich, and over the Plumstead marshes. 
There are variants of this itinerary, we were told, 
but all are equally smelly and sooty, and it was 
only well after we had passed Gravesend that we 
felt that we had really left town behind, and even 
then we could see the vermilion stacks of great 
steamships making their way up London's river 
to the left, and the mouse-brown sails of the 
barges going round the coast to Ipswich and Yar- 
mouth. 



The South Coast; 245 

At last a stretch of green unsmoked and un- 
spoiled country, that via Stroud to Rochester, 
came into view. 

Rochester on the Medway, with its memories of 
Mr. Pickwick and the Bull Inn (still remaining), 
the cathedral and Gad 's Hill, Dickens 's home near 
by, is a literary shrine of the first importance. 
We stopped en route and did our duty, but were 
soon on our way again through the encumbered 
main street of Chatham and up the long hill to 
Sittingbourne, itself a dull, respectable market- 
town with a boiled mutton and grilled kipper inn 
which offers no inducements to a gormand to stop 
for lunch. 

We kept on to Canterbury and didn't do much 
better at a hotel which shall be nameless. The 
hotels are all bad at Canterbury, according to 
Continental standards, and there is little choice 
between them. 

It is said that the oldest inn in England is 
" The Fountain " at Canterbury. " The Foun- 
tain ' ' claims to have housed the wife of Earl God- 
win when she came to meet her husband on his re- 
turn from Denmark in the year 1029, and to have 
been the temporary residence of Archbishop Lan- 
franc whilst his palace was being rebuilt in 1070. 
There is a legend, too, that the four knights who 
murdered Thomas a Becket made this house their 
rendezvous. Moreover, " The Fountain " can 
boast of a testimonial to its excellence as an inn 
written six hundred years ago, for, when the mar- 
riage of Edward the First to his second queen, 



246 The Automobilist Abroad 

Margaret of France, was solemnized at Canter- 
bury Cathedral on September 12, 1299, the ambas- 
sador of the Emperor of Germany, who was 
among the distinguished guests, wrote thus to his 
master: " The inns in England are the best in 
Europe, those of Canterbury are the best in Eng- 
land, and ' The Fountain,' wherein I am now 
lodged as handsomely as I were in the king's 
palace, the best in Canterbury." Times have 
changed since the days of Edward LI 

Canterbury is a very dangerous town to drive 
through. Its streets are narrow and badly paved, 
and there are unexpected turnings which bring 
up a lump in one's throat when he is driving at 
his most careful gait and is suddenly confronted 
with a governess's cart full of children, a peram- 
bulator, and a bath-chair, all in the middle of the 
road, where, surely, the two latter have no right 
to be. 

The grand old shrine of Thomas a Becket, the 
choir built by Lanfranc's monks, and the general 
ensemble of the cathedral close are worth all the 
risk one goes through to get to them. The cathe- 
dral impresses one as the most thoroughly French 
of all the Gothic churches of Britain, and because 
of this its rank is high among the ecclesiastical 
architectural treasures of the world. Its history 
is known to all who know that of England, of the 
church, and of architecture, and the edifice tells 
the story well. 

The distant view from the road, as one ap- 
proaches the city, is one that can only be described 



The South Coast 247 

as grand. The fabric of the great cathedral, the 
rooftops of the houses, the sloping hills rising 
from the water's edge, and again falling lightly 
down to the town, form a grandly imposing view, 
the equal of which one seldom sees on the main 
travelled roads of England. 

Between Canterbury and Winchester ran one of 
the oldest roads in England, the " Pilgrim's 
Way." Many parts of it still exist, and it is be- 
lieved by many to be the oldest monument of 
human work in these islands. About two-thirds 
of the length of the road is known with certainty, 
and to some extent the old itinerary forms the 
modern highway. Its earliest route seems to have 
been from Stonehenge to Canterbury, but later the 
part from Stonehenge to Alton was abandoned 
in favour of that from Winchester to Alton. 
Guildford and Dorking were places that it 
touched, though it was impossible to say with cer- 
tainty where it crossed the Medway. 

Margate, Ramsgate, and the Isle of Thanet lay 
to the left of us, but we struck boldly across the 
downs to Dover's Bay, under the shadow of the 
Shakespeare Cliff, made famous in the scenic ac- 
cessories of The Tempest. 

Dover, seventy-two miles by road from London, 
has a good hotel, almost reaching the Continental 
standard, though it is not an automobile hotel and 
you must house your machine elsewhere. It is 
called the Lord Warden Hotel, and is just off the 
admiralty pier head. It suited us very well in 
spite of the fact that the old-school Englishman 



248 The Automobilist Abroad 

contemptuously refers to it as a place for brides 
and for seasick Frenchmen waiting the prospect 
of a fair crossing by the Calais packet. 

The descent into Dover's lower town from the 
downs above is fraught with considerable danger 
for the automobilist. It is steep, winding, and 
narrow, and one climbs out of it again the next 
morning by an equally steep, though less narrow, 
road up over the Shakespeare Cliff and down 
again abruptly into Folkestone. 

Dover is not fashionable as a resort, and its 
one pretentious sea-front hotel is not a lovely 
thing — most sea-front hotels are not. In spite 
of this there is vastly more of interest going on, 
with the coming and going of the great liners and 
the cross-channel boats of the harbour, than is 
to be found in a mere watering-place, where band 
concerts, parade-walks, " nigger minstrels," tea 
fights, and excursions in the neighbourhood are 
the chief attractions which are advertised, and are 
fondly believed by the authorities to be sufficient 
to draw the money-spending crowds. 

Dover is a very interesting place ; the Shakes- 
peare Cliff dominates it on one side and the old 
castle ruin on the other, to-day as they did when 
the first of the Cinq-Ports held England's destiny 
in the hollow of her hand. Sir Walter Raleigh 
prayed his patron Elizabeth to strengthen her 
fortifications here and formulate plans for a great 
port. Much was done by her, but a fitting realiza- 
tion of Dover's importance as a deep-water port 



The South Coast 249 

has only just come to pass, and then only because 
of a significant hint from the German emperor. 

Shakespeare's, or Lear's, Cliff at Dover is one 
of the first things to which the transatlantic up- 
channel traveller's attention is called. Blind old 
Gloster has thus described it : 

" There is a cliff whose high and bending head 
Looks fearfully into the confined deep." 

The English War Department of to-day, it is 
rumoured, would erase this landmark, because the 
cliff obstructs the range of heavy guns, thus jeop- 
ardizing the defence of Dover; but there are 
those who, knowing that chalk is valuable, sug- 
gest that commercialism is at the foundation of 
the scheme for destroying the cliff. The Dover 
corporation has accordingly passed a resolution 
of remonstrance against the destruction of what 
they claim " would rob the English port of one 
of its most thrilling attractions." 

Folkestone is more sadly respectable than 
Dover; more homoeopathic, one might say. The 
town is equally difficult for an automobile to make 
its way through, but as one approaches the 
water's edge things somewhat improve. Wam- 
pach's Hotel at Folkestone is not bad, but B. B. 
B., as the " Automobile Club's Hand Book " puts 
it (bed, bath, and breakfast), costs eight shillings 
and sixpence a day. This is too much for what 
you get. 

We followed the shore road to Hythe, Dym- 
church, New Romney, and Rye, perhaps thirteen 



250 The Automobilist Abroad 

miles all told, along a pebble-strewn roadway with 
here and there a glimpse of the shining sea and 
the smoke from a passing steamer. 

To our right was Romney Marsh, calling up 
memories of the smuggling days of old, when 
pipes of port and bales of tobacco mysteriously 
found their way inland without paying import 
duties. 

Rye is by no means a resort ; it is simply a dull, 
sleepy, red-roofed little seaside town, with, at sun- 
set, a riot of blazing colour reflected from the 
limpid pools left by the retreating waters of the 
Channel, which now lies five miles away across a 
mud-flat plain, although coastwise shipping once 
came to Rye's very door-step. 

The entrance to the town, by an old mediaeval 
gateway, is easily enough made by a careful 
driver, but an abrupt turn near the top of the 
slight rise cost us a mud-guard, it having been 
ripped off by an unexpected and most dangerous 
hitching-post. This may be now removed ; it cer- 
tainly is if the local policeman did his duty and 
reported our really atrocious language to the au- 
thorities. Of all imbecilic and unneedful obstruc- 
tions to traffic, Rye's half-hidden hitching-post is 
one of the most notable seen in an automobile 
tour comprising seven countries and several hun- 
dreds, perhaps thousands, of large and small 
towns. 

The chief curiosities of Rye are its quaint hill- 
top church, the town walls, and the Ypres tower, 



The South Coast 251 

all quite foreign in motive and aspect from any- 
thing else in England. 

Those interested in literary shrines may well 
bow their heads before the door of the dignified 
Georgian house near the church, in which resides 
the enigmatic Henry James. There may be other 
literary lights who shed a glow over Rye, but we 
did not learn of them, and surely none could be 
more worthy of the attention of literary lion- 
hunters than the American who has become 
" more English " than the English themselves. 

We left Rye by a toll-gate road over the 
marshes, bound for Winchelsea, and, passing 
through the ivy-clad tower which spans the road- 
way, stopped abruptly, like all hero or heroine 
worshippers, before the dainty home of Ellen 
Terry. The creeper-clung little brick cottage is 
a reminiscence of old-world peace and quiet which 
must be quite refreshing after an active life on 
the stage. 

Hastings saw us for the night. Hastings and 
St. Leonards, twin sea-front towns, are what, for 
a better description, might be called snug and 
smug. They are simply the most depressing, un- 
lovely resorts of sea-front and villas that one will 
see in a round of all the English resorts. 

As a pompous, bustling, self-sufficient little 
city, Hastings, with its fisher men and women, its 
fish-market and the ruined castle-crowned height, 
has some quaintness and character; but as a 
resort where the chief amusements are scrappy, 
tuneless hurdy-gurdies, blatant brass bands, liv- 



252 The Automobilist Abroad 

ing picture shows, or third-rate repetitions of a 
last year's London theatrical successes, it is 
about the rankest boring proposition which ever 
drew the unwary visitor. 

We had our " B. B. B." that night at the 
Queen's Hotel, a vast barracks of a place near the 
end of the Parade. The best thing about it was 
the view from the windows of our sleeping-rooms, 
and the fact that we could stable our automobile 
under the same roof. 

We made a little run inland from Hastings the 
next morning to view old Battle Abbey. The bat- 
tlement-crowned gateway is still one of the archi- 
tectural marvels of England. It took us a dozen 
miles out of our way, but always among the rolling 
downs which dip down to the sea, chalk-faced and 
grass-grown in a manner characteristic only of 
the south coast of England. 

We came to Eastbourne through Pevensey, 
famed for its old ruined castle and much history. 
A low-lying marsh-grown fishing-port of olden 
times, Pevensey was the landing-place of the Con- 
queror when he came to lay the foundation-stones 
of England's greatness. It is a shrine that 
Britons should bow down before, and reverently. 

Eastbourne is a vast improvement, as a resort, 
over any south coast town we had yet seen. It is 
not gay, it is rather sedate, and certainly emi- 
nently respectable and dignified. Giant wheels, 
hurdy-gurdies, and quack photographers are ban- 
ished from its beach and esplanade, and one may 
stroll undisturbed by anything but perambulators 



The South Coast 253 

and bath-chairs. Its sea-front walk of a couple of 
miles or more is as fine as any that can be found 
from the Foreland to the Lizard. 

Most energetically we climbed to the top of 
Beachy Head, gossiped with the coast-guard, 
stole a peep through the telescope by which 
Lloyd's observer at the signal-station picks out 
passing ships, and got down the great hill again 
in time for lunch at the Burlington Hotel. We 
lunched in more or less stately fashion, well, if 
not luxuriously, in a great dining-room whose sole 
occupant, besides ourselves, was England's laure- 
ate. 

He is herein endorsed as possessing a good 
taste in seaside hotels, whatever one may think 
of the qualities of his verse. The Burlington 
seemed to us the best conducted and most satis- 
factory hotel on all the south coast, except per- 
haps the Lord Warden at Dover. 

It was a more or less rugged climb, by a badly 
made road, up over the downs from Eastbourne, 
only to drop down again as quickly through East- 
dean to Newhaven, a short ten miles, but a trying 
one. 

Newhaven is a sickly burg sheltered well to the 
west of Beachy Head. Its only excitements are 
the comings and goings of the Dieppe steamers 
and a few fishing-boats. It is one of the best ports 
for shipping one's automobile to France, and one 
of the cheapest. In no other respect is Newhaven 
worth a glance of the eye, and English travellers 
themselves have no good word for the abominable 



254 The Automobilist Abroad 

tea and coffee served to limp, half-famished trav- 
ellers as they get off the Dieppe boat. This well- 
worn and well-deserved reputation was no induce- 
ment for us to stop, so we made speed for 
Brighton via Eottingdean. 

Rottingdean will be famous in most minds as 
being the rival of Brattleboro, Vt.. as the home 
of Eudyard Kipling. Sightseers came from 
Brighton in droves and stared the author out of 
countenance, as they did at Brattleboro, and he 
removed to the still less known, and a great deal 
less accessible, village of Burwash in Kent. Thus 
passed the fame of Rottingdean. 

Brighton has been called London-on-Sea. and 
with some truth, but as the sun shines here with 
frequency it differs from London in that respect. 

Brighton is a brick and iron built town, exceed- 
ingly unlovely, but habitable. Its two great tower- 
ing sea-front hotels look American, but they are 
a great deal more substantially built. There are 
two rivals for popular favour, the Grand and the 
Metropole. They are much alike in all their ap- 
pointments, but there are fewer tea-drinkers and 
after-dinner sleepers (and snorers) at the Metro- 
pole. There is also a famous old coaching house, 
the Ship Hotel (most curiously named), which 
caters particularly for automobilists. 

Brighton is the typical seaside resort of Britain. 
It is like nothing on the Continent: it is not even 
as attractive a place as most Continental resorts; 
but it is the best thing in Britain. 

Brighton and Hove have a sea-front of perhaps 



The South Coast 255 

three miles. Houses and hotels line the promen- 
ade on one side, a pebbly beach and the sea on the 
other. 

The attractions of Brighton are conventional 
and an imitation of those in London. In addition 
one bathes, in summer, in the lapping waves, and 
in winter sits in a glass shelter which breaks the 
wind, and gazes seaward. 

There are theatrical attractions and operas in 
the theatre, and vocal and instrumental concerts 
on the pier, all through the year. There are also 
various sorts of functions which go on in the 
turnip-topped Royal Pavilion of the Georges, 
which once seen will ever afterward be avoided. 

It is not always bright and sunny at Brighton. 
We were storm-bound at the Metropole for two 
days, and the Channel waves dashed up over the 
pier and promenade and drowned out the strollers 
who sought to take their constitutional abroad. 

We sat tight in the hotel and listened to Sousa 
marches, " Hiawatha," and " The Belle of New 
York " strummed out by a none too competent 
band. A genial fat-faced old lady of uncertain 
age tried to inveigle us into a game of bridge, but 
that was not what we came for, so we strenuously 
refused. 

The flood-tide of holiday trippers at Brighton 
is in August. This is the month when, at certain 
periods of the day, the mile length of roadway 
from railway station to sea is a closely packed 
crowd of excursionists; when the long expanse 
of sea-front and sand presents its most animated 



256 The Automobilist Abroad 

spectacle of holiday-keeping people; when the 
steamers plying along the Sussex coast, or to 
France, the white-sailed yachts, the rowing-boats, 
and motor-boats are the most numerous; and 
when the hundred and one entertainers and pro- 
viders of all kinds do their busiest trade. 

There is a public bathing-station at the eastern 
end of the sea-front. A large marquee is pro- 
vided, and a worthy lady, the incarnation of the 
British matron, sees to it that the curtains are 
properly drawn and that inquisitive small boys 
keep their distance. But it is rather a long walk 
from the marquee to the water when the tide is 
low, and one often hears the camera click on the 
irresistible charms of some swan-like creature 
ambling down to deep water. The authorities 
have promised to put a stop to such liberties. 
Can they? 

We left Brighton with a very good idea indeed 
of what it was like. It has a place to fill and it 
fills it very well, but the marvel is that the Brit- 
isher submits to it, when he can spend his week- 
ends, or his holiday, at Boulogne or Dieppe for 
practically the same expenditure of time and 
money, and get real genuine relaxation and a 
gaiety which is not forced. So much for 
Brighton. 

The Brighton police authorities have heeded 
the words of admonition of the tradesmen and 
hotel-keepers, and the automobilist has an easy 
time of it. It is an example which it is to be hoped 
will be far-reaching in its effects. 



The South Coast 257 

The road by the coast runs along by New Shore- 
ham to Worthing, where the automobilist is ca- 
tered for in really satisfactory fashion at Warne's 
Hotel, which possesses what is called a motor 
depot, a name which describes its functions in an 
obvious manner. It is a good place to lunch and 
a good place to obtain gasoline and oil. What 
more does the touring automobilist want? Not 
much but good roads and ever varying scenery. 

Worthing has a population of twenty-five 
thousand conservative souls, and a mild climate. 
Its popularity is only beginning, but it boasts 
1,748 hours of sunshine, an exceedingly liberal 
allowance for an English resort. It has also a 
" school of cookery; " this may account for the 
fare being as excellent a-s it is at " Warne's," 
though the proprietors are silent on this point. 

Littlehampton came next in our itinerary. It 
almost equals Rye as one of the picture spots of 
England's south coast. It may develop some day 
into an artist's sketching ground which will rival 
the Cornish coast. It has a tidal river with old 
boats and barges lying picturesquely about, and 
it permits ' ' mixed bathing, ' ' a rarity in England. 
In spite of this there appears to be no falling off 
in morals, and when other English seaside resorts 
adopt the same procedure they will be falling out 
of the conservatism which is keeping many of 
them from developing at the rate of Littlehamp- 
ton. 

We left the coast here to visit Arundel and its 
castle, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk. It was a 



258 The Automobilist Abroad 

Friday and the keep and park were open to the 
public. 

Arundel is an ancient town which sleeps its 
life away and lives up to the traditions of me- 
dievalism in truly conservative fashion. The 
Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland 
makes no recommendation as to the hotels of 
Arundel, and presumably the Norfolk Arms cares 
nothing for the automobile traffic. We did not 
stop at any hotel, but left our machine outside the 
castle gate, enjoyed the conventional stroll about 
inside the walls and in an hour were on the way 
to Chichester. 

Sussex is a county which, according to some 
traditions, possesses four particular delicacies. 
Izaak Walton, in 1653, named them as follows: 
a Selsea cockle, a Chichester lobster, an Arundel 
mullet, and an Amberley trout. Another author- 
ity, Ray, adds to these three more : a Pulborough 
eel, a Rye herring, and a Bourn wheatear, which, 
he says, " are the best in their kind, understand 
it, of those that are taken in this country." 

Chichester is a cathedral town not usually in- 
cluded in the itinerary of stranger-tourists. Its 
proud old cathedral and its detached bell-tower 
are remarkable for many things, but the strange- 
ness of the belfry, entirely unconnected with the 
church fabric itself, will strike the natives of the 
land of skyscrapers most of all. 

Chichester is conservative in all things, and 
social affairs, said a public-house habitue, are en- 
tirely dominated by the cathedral clique. He 



The South Coast 259 

may have been a bad authority, this doddering old 
septuagenarian, mouthing his pint of beer, but he 
entertained us during the half-hour of a passing 
shower with many plain-spoken opinions about 
many things, including subjects as wide apart as 
clericalism and submarines. 

Our route from Chichester was to Portsmouth 
and Southsea, neither of which interested us to 
any extent. The former is warlike in every turn 
of its crooked streets and the latter is full of re- 
tired colonels and majors, who keep always to the 
middle of the footpath across Southsea Common, 
and will not turn the least bit to one side, for 
courtesy or any other reason. Too much curry 
on their rice or port after dinner probably ac- 
counts for it. 

We stopped at the George at Portsmouth. It 
offers no accommodation for automobiles, but a 
garage is near by. The halo of sentiment and 
romance hung over the more or less dingy old 
hotel, dingy but clean, and possessed of a parlour 
filled with a collection of old furniture which 
would make the connoisseur want to carry it all 
away with him. 

This was the terminus of old-time travel from 
London to Portsmouth. The Portsmouth road, in 
coaching days as in automobile days, ran through 
England's fairest counties down to her emporium 
of ships. Its beginnings go back to the founda- 
tions of England's naval power. 

Edward IV. made Portsmouth a strong place 



260 The Automobilist Abroad 

of defence, but the road from town only became 
well travelled in later centuries. 

Along the old Portsmouth road were, and are 
still, any number of nautically named inns. At 
Liphook is the Anchor — where Pepys put up 
when on his way to England's chief naval town — 
and the Ship ; there is another Anchor at Ripley ; 
at Petersfield stands the Dolphin, and near Guild- 
ford is the Jovial Sailor. All these, and other 
signs of a like nature, suffice to tell the observant 
wayfarer that he is on the road which hordes of 
seamen have trod on their way to and from Lon- 
don, and that it was formerly deemed well worth 
while to hang out invitations to them. 

In 1703 Prince George of Denmark made nine 
miles in six hours on this road, an indication that 
the good roads movement had not begun. In 1751 
Doctor Burton suggested that all the animals in 
Sussex, including the women, were long-legged 
because of ' ' the difficulty of pulling their feet out 
of the mud which covers the roads hereabouts." 

A hundred or more years ago Nelson came by 
post by this road to Portsmouth to hoist his flag 
upon the Victory. He arrived at the George, the 
same which was sheltering our humble selves, at 
six in the morning, as the records tell, having 
travelled all night. The rest is history, but the 
old Victory still swings at her moorings in Ports- 
mouth harbour, a shrine before which all lovers 
of the sea and its tales may worship. Ports- 
mouth is the great storehouse of Britain's battle- 
ships, and the Solent from Spithead to Stokes Bay 




Ryde 

Newhaven 

Isle of Wight 



Royal Yacht Squadron 
Folkestone 



Annul el Castle 



The South Coast 261 

is a vast pool where float all manner of warlike 
craft. 

The Isle of Wight was the immediate attraction 
for us at Portsmouth. One makes the passage by 
boat in thirty minutes, and when one gets there he 
finds leafy lanes and well-kept roads that will put 
many mainland counties to shame. The writer 
does not know the length of the roadways of the 
Isle of Wight, but there are enough to give one a 
good three days of excursions and promenades. 

We made our headquarters at Ryde and sallied 
out after breakfast and after lunch each day, in- 
variably returning for the night. 

The beauties of the Isle of Wight are many and 
varied, with all the charms of sea and shore. For 
a literary shrine it has Tennyson's Freshwater 
and the Tennyson Beacon high up on the crest of 
the downs overlooking the Needles, Freshwater 
Bay, and the busy traffic of the English Channel, 
where the ships make landward to signal the ob- 
servers at St. Catherine's Point. 

Cowes and " Cowes week " are preeminent 
annual events in society's periodical swing around 
the circle. 

The real development jf Cowes, the home of the 
Royal Yacht Squadron^ has been the evolution of 
week-end yachting in the summer months. City 
men, and jaded legislators, held to town by the 
Parliamentary duties of a long summer session, 
rush down to Southampton every Saturday and 
each steps off his train or motor-car on to the 
deck of his yacht, and then, after a spin westward 



262 



The Automobilist Abroad 




The South Coast 263 

to the Needles or eastward to the Nab or Warner 
Lightship, soothed by the lapping of the waters, 
and refreshed by the pure sea air, returns on 
the Monday to face again the terrors of London 
heat and " fag." 

Taken all in all, we found the Isle of Wight the 
most enjoyable region of its area in all England. 
It is quite worth the trouble of crossing from the 
mainland with one's automobile in order to do it 
thoroughly; for what one wants is green fields 
and pastures new and a breadth of sea and sky. 




Sncf 

TO 

Offroat's 




266 



CHAPTER III 

LAND'S END TO JOHN o' GROAT *S 

We had already done a bit of conventional tour- 
ing in England, and we thought we knew quite 
all of the charms and fascinations of the idyllic 
countryside of most of Britain, not omitting even 
Ireland. 

The cathedral towns had appealed to us in our 
youthful days, and we had rediscovered a good 
portion of Dickens 's England on another occasion, 
had lived for a fortnight on a house-boat on the 
Thames, and had cruised for ten days on the Nor- 
folk Broads, and besides had played golf in Scot- 
land, and attempted to shoot grouse on a Scottish 
moor. All this had furnished at least variety, and, 
when it came to automobiling through Britain, it 
was merely going over well-worn ground that we 
had known in our cycling days, and usually we 
went merely where fancy willed. 

Conditions had changed considerably, in fact all 
things had changed, we ourselves no less than cer- 
tain aspects of the country which we had pictured 
as always being (in England) of that idyllic tenor 
of which the poet sings. This comes of living too 
much in London, and with too frequent week-ends 
at Brighton, Bournemouth, or Cromer. 

267 



268 The Automobilist Abroad 

For years, ever since we had first set foot in 
England in the days when cycling en tandem (and 
even touring in the same manner) was in vogue, 
if not the fashion, we had heard of John o ' Groat 's 
house, and we had seen Land's End many a time 
coming up Channel. We knew, too, that among 
scorching cyclists " Land's End to John o' 
Groat's " was a classic itinerary for those who 
would boast of their prowess and their grit. 

All this passed and then came the automobile. 
" Land's End to John o' Groat's " is nothing for 
an automobile, though it is the longest straight- 
away bit of road in all Britain, 888 miles, to be 
exact. If you are out for a record on an automo- 
bile you do it as a " non-stop " run. It's dull, 
foolhardy business that, and it proves nothing 
except your ability to keep awake for anything 
between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, which 
you can do just as well sitting up with a sick 
friend. 

In spite of the banal sound that the very words 
had for us, " Land's End to John o' Groat's "had 
a perennial fascination, and so we set out with our 
automobile to cover this much talked of itinerary, 
with all its varied charms and deficiencies, for, 
taking it all in all, it is probably one of the hilliest 
roads in Britain, rising as it does over eight dis- 
tinct ranges of what are locally called mountains, 
and mountains they virtually are when it comes 
to crossing them by road. 

There is nothing very exciting to be had from 
a tour such as this, though it is nearly a nine nun- 



Land's End to John o' Groat's 269 





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270 The Automobilist Abroad 

dred mile straight-away promenade. For the 
most part one's road lies through populous cen- 
tres, far more so than any American itinerary for 
a reliability trial for automobiles that was ever 
conceived. Many are the " events " which have 
been run over this "Land's End — John o' 
Groat's " course, and the journey has proved the 
worth or worthlessness of many a,, new idea in 
automobilism. 

The modern automobile is getting complicated, 
but it is also becoming efficient, if not exactly ap- 
proaching perfection as yet. The early days of 
automobiling were not fraught with so many tech- 
nicalities as to-day, when the last new thing may 
be a benzine bus or a turbine trailer; formerly 
everything was simple and crude, — and more or 
less inefficient. To-day many cars are as compli- 
cated as a chronometer and require the education 
of an expert who has lived among their intricacies 
for many months in order to control their vagaries 
and doctor their ills, which, if not chronic, are as 
varied as those of an old maid of sixty. 

Four of us started on our road to the north as 
fit as possible, and we were courageous enough to 
think our automobile was likewise, as it was a 
tried and trusty friend with some twenty thou- 
sand miles to its credit, and with never a breakage 
so far as its mechanism was concerned. 

We had stayed a few days at Penzance and got 
to know something of Cornwall and things Cor- 
nish. Unquestionably Cornwall is the least 
spoiled section of Southern Britain; its coast- 



Land's End to John o' Groat's 271 

line is rocky and serrated, and its tors and hills 
and rills are about as wild and unspoiled by the 
hand of man as can be imagined. There is a vast 
literature on the subject if one cares to read it, 
and the modern fictionists (like the painter-men) 
have even developed a " Cornish school." How- 
ever, there need be no discussion of its merits or 
demerits here. 

In Mount's Bay is the Cornish counterpart of 
Normandy's St. Michel's Mount. It is by no 
means so grand or imposing, or endowed with such 
a wealth of architectural charm as the cross-chan- 
nel Mont St. Michel, but the English St. Michael's 
Mount, a granite rock rising from the sea two 
hundred and fifty or more feet, was sufficient of 
an attraction to draw us to Penzance for our head- 
quarters and to keep us till we had visited its 
castle of the days of Charles II. There is no ques- 
tion of the age of St. Michael's Mount, for Ptol- 
emy charted it in Roman days, and the Roman 
warriors, who battled with the Britons, made 
spear-heads and hatchets of the tin and iron 
which they dug from its rocky defences. 

The grim, unlovely little hotel at Land's End 
sheltered us the night before the commencement 
of our journey north, and the Longships Light- 
house flashed its warning in through our open bed- 
room window all the night long and made us 
dream of wicked and unworldly monster auto- 
mobiles bearing down upon us with a great blazing 
phare which blotted out all else. 

The nightmare passed, we got ourselves to- 



272 The Automobilist Abroad 

gether at five in the morning, drank tepid tea, 
and ate the inevitable bacon and eggs furnished 
one for breakfast in England, and, before lunch, 
had passed Bodmin, crossed Bodmin moor (a little 
Exmoor), and skirted Dartmoor, just north of 
Great Links Tor, arriving at Exeter at high noon. 

Pople's New London Hotel at Exeter is the 
headquarters of the Automobile Club, is patron- 
ized by Royalty (so the advertisements say), and 
is a very satisfactory-looking old-century inn 
which has not wholly succumbed to modern im- 
provement, nor yet is it wholly backward. It is 
" fair to middling " only, so far as the require- 
ments of the automobilist go (what Royalty may 
think of it the writer does not know), but its pro- 
prietor ought to take a trip abroad and find out 
what his house lacks. 

The wonder of Exeter for us was the carved 
west porch of its cathedral, not very good carving, 
we were told, but undeniably effective, peopled as 
it was with a whole regiment of sculptured effigies. 

Exeter has a ruined castle, too, called Rouge- 
ment, a name which preserves the identity of its 
Norman origin. Exeter's High Street is a curious 
stagy affair, with great jutting house gables, pil- 
lars, and pignons, undeniably effective, but a ter- 
ror to automobilists because of its narrowness and 
the congestion of its traffic. 

The road turns north after leaving Exeter and 
passes Taunton, " one of the nicest towns in the 
west of England," as we were told by the land- 
lord's daughter on leaving Exeter. Not knowing 



Land's End to John o> Groat's 273 




274 The Automobilist Abroad 

what her standard was for judgment, but suspect- 
ing it was tea and buns, we delved away into the 
county of Somerset and reached Wells, on the 
edge of the Mendip Hills, before dinner. 

Somerset is reputed to be one of the loveliest 
counties in the west of England and one of the 
most countrified of all Britain. It is a region of 
farming lands, of big and little estates, with the 
big ones predominating, which the land reformers, 
and all others who give it a thought, claim must 
some day be divided among the people. When 
that millennium comes Somerset will be a paradise 
for the people. In spite of its productiveness and 
its suitability for farming, the great estates of the 
wealthy are used for the purposes of pleasure and 
not of profit, for the hunting of foxes and for the 
shooting of pheasants. 

Wells is an episcopal city with a bishop who 
presides also over Bath. Wells is essentially ec- 
clesiastical ; never had it a momentous or warlike 
history; it is bare of romance; it has no manu- 
factures and no great families. Wells Cathedral 
takes high rank for the originality of its architec- 
ture, its general constructive excellence, and its 
sculptures. 

There are three picturesquely named hotels, 
the Swan, the Mitre, and the Star. They are all 
equally dull, respectable, and conservative, and 
they stick to tradition and conventional English 
fare. You will probably arrive on boiled-mutton 
night; we did, and suspect that it recurs about 
three times a week, but it was good mutton, though 




Taunton, Exeter, and Bristol 



Land's End to John o' Groat's 275 

it would have been a great deal better roasted, 
instead of boiled. 

Via Cheddar, where the cheeses come from, we 
made our way to Bristol. Bristol is one of the 
most progressive automobile towns in England. 
You may see all sorts and conditions of automo- 
biles at Bristol, even American automobiles, which 
are more or less of a rarity in Europe, even in 
England. 

From Bristol to Gloucester, another cathedral 
town, we passed over good roads and pleasant 
ones, rounding meanwhile the Cotswolds and pass- 
ing direct to Worcester, where we lunched. 

It is useless to attempt to describe a complete 
trip in pages such as these, and, beyond com- 
menting on changing conditions and novel scenes, 
it is not attempted. Generally speaking the road 
surfaces were excellent throughout, but the grades 
of the hills were ofttimes abnormal, and the nar- 
rowness of main roads, and the hedge-hidden by- 
roads which crossed them, made travelling more 
or less of a danger for the* stranger, particularly 
if he was not habituated to England's custom of 
" meeting on the left and passing on the right." 

Following the valley of the Severn, by Shrews- 
bury and Whitechurch, we crossed the great Holy- 
head Road, " the king's highway," from London 
to Holyhead. 

From Ogilby's Road Book, an old book-stall find 
of one of our party at Shrewsbury, we learned 
that in days gone by the coach " "Wonder " left 
the Bull and Mouth, at St. Martin 's-le-Grand in 



276 The Automobilist Abroad 

London, at 6.30 a. m., and was at Shrewsbury at 
10.30 the same night. Good going indeed for 
those days! 

At Shrewsbury one is within easy reach of the 
Welsh border, but, in spite of the novelty prom- 
ised us, we kept on our way north. This was not 
because we feared the " evil character " of the 
Welsh (as an old writer put it), but because we 
feared their language. 

We left Liverpool and its docks, and Man- 
chester and its cotton factories, to the left, and, 
passing through Warrington and Preston, arrived 
at Lancaster for the night. It was the longest 
day's driving we had done in England, something 
over two hundred miles. All the ordinary char- 
acteristics of the southern counties had been left 
far behind. The prettiness of conventional Eng- 
lish scenery had made way for something more of 
character and severity of outline. For the mor- 
row we had to look forward to the climb over 
Shap Fell, one of England's genuine mountain 
roads, or as near like one as the country has. 

Lancaster was perhaps not the best place we 
could have chosen for the night, but everything 
had been running well and we had pushed on 
simply for the joy of the running. The County 
Hotel at Lancaster was like other county hotels 
in England. Verb. sap. They had the audacity 
to charge two shillings for housing our automo- 
bile for the night, and pointed out the fact that 
this was the special rate given members of the 
Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland. 



Land's End to John o' Groat's 277 

Well ! It was the most awful ' ' roast ' ' we found 
in England! They must have some grudge 
against the Club! " B. B. B." cost seven shill- 
ings and sixpence, and dinner four shillings 
more, a bottle of Bordeaux five shillings, etc. 
Four of us for the night (including a hot bath 
for each — which cost the hotel practically noth- 
ing) paid something like £3 for our accommoda- 
tion. It wasn't worth it! 

We passed the " Lake District " to the left the 
next morning, where it always rains, we are told. 
Perhaps it always does rain in some parts of 
Westmoreland, but it was bright and sunny when 
we crossed Shap Fell, at a height of some- 
thing like twelve hundred feet above sea-level. 
The railway station of Shap Summit is itself at 
an elevation of a thousand feet. We had crossed 
nothing like this previously in England, although 
it is not so very high after all, nor is it so very 
terrifying in the ascent or descent. The Castle 
of Comfort Inn in the Mendip Hills was only seven 
hundred feet, but here we were five hundred feet 
above it, and the neighbouring Fells, Helvellyn 
and Scafell in particular, raised their regular, 
rounded peaks to something over thirty-two hun- 
dred feet in the air. 

Carlisle is commonly called the border town be- 
tween England and Scotland ; at any rate it was a 
vantage-ground in days gone by that was of a 
great value to one faction and a thorn in the side 
to the other. The conquering and unconquered 
Scots are the back-bone of Britain, there's no 



278 The Automobilist Abroad 

denying that; and Carlisle is near enough to the 
border to be intimately acquainted with their 
virtues. 

We inspected Carlisle's cathedral, its ugly 
castle, and the County Hotel, — and preferred the 
two former. One thing in Carlisle struck us as 
more remarkable than all else, and that was that 
the mean annual temperature was stated to be 
48° F. It was just that when we were there, 
though cloudy and unpromising as to weather. In 
our opinion Carlisle is an unlovely, disagreeable 
place. 

Gretna Green, with its famous, or infamous, 
career as a marriage mart, had little to offer a 
passing tourist beyond some silly, vulgar post- 
cards on sale at a newsdealer's. 

Across the border topographical characteristics 
did not greatly change, at least not at once, from 
what had gone immediately before, and it was not 
until Lockerbie was reached that we fully realized 
that we were in Scotland. 

It was a long, long pull, and a hard, hard pull 
of seventy miles from Lockerbie to Edinburgh, 
via Moffat, Biggar, and Penicuik, skirting the 
Fells of Peebleshire and running close beneath the 
Pentland Hills, with memories of Stevenson's 
tales ever uppermost in our minds. 

Via Dalkeith the entrance into Edinburgh is 
delightful, but via Rosslyn it is unbeautiful 
enough until one actually drops down into world- 
famed Princes ' Street. 

Romantic Edinburgh is known by all European 



Land's End to John o' Groat's 279 

travellers as one of the sights never omitted from 
a comprehensive itinerary. It is quaint, pictur- 
esque, grand, squalid, and luxurious all rolled into 
one. Its castle crowns the height above the town 
on one side, and Arthur's Seat does the same on 
the other, with gloomy old Holyrood in the gulf 
between, the whole softened and punctuated with 
many evidences of modern life, the smoke and 
noise of railways, trams, and factories. There are 
many guide-books to Edinburgh, but there are 
none so satisfactory as Stevenson's tales dealing 
with the town. In " Kidnapped," " The Master 
of Ballantrae," and " Catriona," he pictures its 
old streets and " stairs," its historic spots, its 
very stones and flags, and the charming country- 
side around in incomparable fashion. 

The Carlton Hotel at Edinburgh is the auto- 
mobile hotel of Britain. There is nothing quite 
so good either in England or Scotland. The proof 
of this is that the Automobile Club de France have 
given it distinctive marks in its " Annuaire de 
VEt ranger." There is the tiny silhouette of a 
knife and fork, and four-poster bed, indicating 
that the tables and beds are of an agreeable ex- 
cellence. This is a great deal more satisfying as 
a recommendation than Baedeker's *. 

We crossed the Firth of Forth via the Granton 
Ferry, from Granton to Burntisland, — pro- 
nounced Burnt Island — a fact that none of us 
knew previously. 

Via Kinross and Loch Leven we arrived at 
Perth for lunch. We went to the Salutation Hotel, 



280 The Automobilist Abroad 

because of its celebrated " Prince Charlie Room," 
and bad no reason to regret the lunch that was 
given us, or the price paid for it. Scottish hotels 
have had a reputation of not being as good as 
those of England and much more costly. We were 
finding things just the reverse. Automobilism is 
an industry in Scotland, not a fad, and the auto- 
mobilist is catered for accordingly, at least so it 
seemed to us, and, since the leading British auto- 
mobile is a Scotch production, who can deny that 
the Scot has grasped the salient points of the 
whole scheme of affairs in a far better manner 
than the Sassenach. 

From Perth, through the very heart of the 
Scotch Highlands, we passed through Glen Garry 
and the Valley of the Spey. Cairn Gorm rose 
something over four thousand feet immediately 
on our right, when, turning abruptly northwest, 
we came into Inverness just at nightfall. It had 
been another long, hard day, and, since Perth, 
over indifferent roads. 

The capital of the Highlands, Inverness, treated 
us very well at the Alexandra Hotel. As a sum- 
mer or autumn resort Inverness has scarcely its 
equal in Britain. It is a lively, interesting, and 
picturesque town, and day lingers far on into the 
night by reason of its northern situation. Its 
temperature, moreover, for the most part of the 
year, is by no means as low as in many parts 
farther south. 

From Inverness, via Dingwall, Tain, and Bonar 
Bridge, the roads improved, lying almost at sea- 



Land's End to John o' Groat's 281 

level. Here was a long sweep westward and then 
eastward again, around the Moray Firth, and it 
was not until we stopped at Helmsdale for lunch, 
102 miles from Inverness, that we left the coast- 
line road, and then only for a short distance. 

Again at Berriedal we came to the coast, the 
surging, battering North Sea waves carving 
grimly every foot of the shore line. Lybster, 
Albster, and Thrumster were not even names that 
we had heard of previously, and we dashed 
through them at the legal limit, with only a glance 
of the eye at their quaintness and unworldliness. 

Caithness is the most northern county of Scot- 
land, and its metropolis is Wick, where one gets 
the nearest approach to the midnight sun that can 
be found with civilized, modern, and up-to-date 
surroundings. 

The Scottish Automobile Club vouched for the 
accommodation of the Station Hotel, at Wick, and 
we had no occasion to question their judgment. 
(B. B. B., six shillings; which is cheap — though 
it costs you two shillings to stable your machine 
at a neighbouring garage.) 

From Wick to John o' Groat's is thirty-six 
miles, out and back. We were all day doing it, 
loafing along over a heather-strewn plain and 
lunching at the Hotel Huna (the significance of 
which name we forgot to ask.) 

This ended our run to the North, five days in 
all, not a very terrific speed or a very venture- 
some proceeding, but as good a test of one's 
knowledge of how to keep his machine running as 



282 The Automobilist Abroad 

can be got anywhere. It was a sort of rapid 
review of many things of which we had hitherto 
only a scrappy, fragmentary knowledge, and is 
a trip which should not be omitted from any one 'a 
grand European itinerary if one has the time and 
means of covering it. 




U'i'i '■-. I 



PART IV 
IN BELGIUM, HOLLAND, AND GERMANY 



283 




284 



CHAPTER I 

ON THE KOAD IN FLANDERS 

There has been a noticeable falling off in tour- 
ing in Belgium. There is no reason for this ex- 
cept the caprice of fashion, and the automobile 
and its popularizing influence will soon change all 
this, in spite of the abominable stretches of paved 
highroads, which here and there and everywhere, 
and most unexpectedly, crop up and shake one al- 
most to pieces, besides working dire disaster to 
the mechanical parts of one's automobile. ^ The 
authorities are improving things, but it will be 
some time yet before Belgium is as free from 
pave as is France. 

The good roads of Belgium are as good as those 
anywhere to be found, and it is only the unlooked 
for and distressingly frequent stretches of paved 
highway which need give any concern. 

The natives speak French — of a sort — here 
and there in Belgium, but they also speak Flemish 
and Walloon. 

We left Paris by the Route de Belgique, crossed 
the frontier at Givet, and made our first stop at 
Rethel, 193 kilometres away, where we passed the 
night, at the Hotel de France. For a town of less 

285 



286 The Automobilist Abroad 

than six thousand people Bethel is quite a metrop- 
olis. It has a grand establishment known as the 
Societe d 'Automobiles Bauchet, which will cater 
for any and every want of the automobilist, and 
has a half-dozen sights of first rank, from the old 
Hotel Dieu to the bizarre doubled-up Eglise St. 
Nicolas and the seventeenth-century, wood-roofed 
market-house. 

Sorbon, four kilometres away, is the birthplace 
of Robert Sorbon, the founder of the Sorbonne at 
Paris, and is a classic excursion which is never 
omitted by true pilgrims who come to Rethel. 

Fifty-three kilometres from Rethel is Rocroi, 
a name which means little to most strangers in 
France. It is near the Belgian frontier and saw 
bloody doings in the Franco-Prussian war. 

Rocroi is a pompous little fortified place 
reached only by one road and a narrow-guage 
railway — literally two streaks of iron rust — 
which penetrate up to the very doors of a pre- 
tentious Hotel de Ville with a Doric fagade, and 
not much else that is remarkable. 

The town has a population of but two thousand, 
is surrounded by fortifications, contains a Ca- 
serne, a Sous-Prefecture, a Prison, and a Palais 
de Justice. All this officialdom weights things 
down considerably, and, what with the prospect of 
the custom-house arrangements at Givet, and the 
necessity of demonstrating to an over-zealous 
gendarme at Rocroi that we really had a " Cer- 
tificat de Capacite," and that the photograph 
which it bore (which didn't look the least like us) 



On the Road in Flanders 287 

was really ours, we were considerably angered and 
delayed on our departure the next morning, par- 
ticularly as we had already been three days en 
route and the frontier was still thirty odd kilo- 
metres away. 

As one passes Rocroi, Belgium and France 
blend themselves into an indistinguishable unit so 
far as characteristics go. Manners and customs 
here change but slowly, and the highroad must be 
followed many kilometres backward toward Paris 
before one gets out of the influence of Flemish 
characteristics. 

We finally got across the Belgium frontier at 
Givet, at least we got our passavant here, though 
the Belgian customs formalities took place at 
Heer-Agimont, formalities which are delightfully 
simple, though evolving the payment of a fee of 
twelve per cent, of the declared value of your 
automobile. You get your receipt for money paid, 
which you present at the frontier station by which 
you leave and get it back again — if you have not 
lost your papers. If you have you might as well 
prepare to live in Belgium the rest of your life, 
as a friend of ours told us he had done, when we 
met him unexpectedly on a cafe terrace at Os- 
tende a week later. 

There be those who are content to grovel in 
dark alleys, among a sordid picturesqueness, sur- 
rounded by a throng of garlic-sodden natives, 
rather than while their time away on the open 
mountainside or wide-spread lake or plain. All 
such are advised to keep away from Southern 



288 The Automobilist Abroad 

Belgium, the Ardennes, and the valley of the 
Meuse at Dinant and Namur. 

We lunched at the Hotel des Postes at Dinant 
on the Meuse, and so lovely was the town and its 
environs, and the twenty-eight kilometres of val- 
ley road to Namur (no pave here), that it took us 
eight hours of a long summer's day to get away 
from Dinant and get settled down again for the 
night in the Hotel d'Harscamp at Namur. 

The native declares there is nothing to equal 
the view from the fortress-height of the citadel of 
Namur, neither in Switzerland nor the Pyrenees ; 
but though we climbed the three twisting kilo- 
metres to the fort, there was nothing more than a 
ravishing view of the charming river valley at our 
feet. The majesty of it all was in the imagination 
of the inhabitant, but all the same it was of a love- 
liness that few artists can describe in paint, few 
authors picture in words, and no kodakist repro- 
duce satisfactorily in print. There is but one 
thing for the curious to do, and that is to go and 
see it for himself. 

The rest of the journey across Belgium to Brus- 
sels the writer would like to forget. Oh, that ter- 
rible next day! Sixty kilometres of one of the 
worst and most destructive roads, for an auto- 
mobile, in Europe, and through a most uninter- 
esting country. Perhaps, if the road had been 
better, the landscape might not have had so op- 
pressive an effect. As it was, an automobilist 
journeys along the road — which is practically 
across the kingdom — his eyes glued to it, his 



On the Road in Flanders 289 

heart in his mouth, and he bumps and slides over 
the wearying kilometres until he all but forgets 
the beauties of the Meuse now so far behind. 
Kilometre after kilometre of this vile road is 
paved with blocks of stone as big as one's head, 
half of which are out of place. And when one's 
automobile sinks into the holes one can but 
shudder. One hears of a road that is paved with 
good intentions. It does not enjoy a good repu- 
tation, but it can't be worse than the road from 
Namur to Brussels ! 

We passed through what, for the want of a 
better and more distinctive name, may be called 
the Waterloo region; but, for the moment, we 
cared not a jot for battle-fields. Our battle with 
the ugly roads of Belgium was all-sufficient. 

Southey's verses are so good, though, that they 
are here given in order that the writer may arrive 
the quicker at Brussels and take his well-earned 
rest : 

" Southward from Brussels lies the field of blood, 
Some three hours' journey for a well-girt man ; 

A horseman who in haste pursued his road 
Would reach it as the second hour began. 

The way is through a forest deep and wide, 

Extending many a mile on either side. 

" No cheerful woodland this of antique trees, 
With thickets varied and with sunny glade ; 
Look where he will, the weary traveller sees 

One gloomy, thick, impenetrable shade 
Of tall straight trunks, which move before his sight, 
With interchange of lines of long green light. 



290 The Automobilist Abroad 

" Here, where the woods receding from the road 

Have left on either hand an open space 

For fields and gardens, and for man's abode, 

Stands Waterloo ; a little lowly place, 
Obscure till now, when it hath risen to fame, 
And given the victory its English name." 

Finally we reached Brussels, still over cobble- 
stones, the road growing worse every minute, and 
stopped at the Grand Central Hotel, in the Place 
de la Bourse, the correspondent of the Touring 
Club de France, and the only hotel of its class 
which serves its table d'hote " vin compris." 

Brussels has ever been put down in the note- 
books of conventional travellers as a little Paris ; 
but this is by no means the case. It resembles 
Paris not at all, except that French francs pass 
current in its shops and the French tongue is the 
language of commerce and society. 

What has less frequently been remarked is that 
Brussels has two contrasting elements of life, 
which, lying close, one upon the other, strongly 
exaggerate the French note of it all, and make 
the hotels, cafes, restaurants, etc., take on that 
boulevard aspect which we fondly think is Paris- 
ian. 

French Brussels and Flemish Brussels are as 
distinct elements in the make-up of this double- 
headed city as are the ingredients of oil and 
water, and like the latter they do not mix. 

When one descends from the hilltop on which is 
modern Brussels, past the cathedral of Ste. 



On the Road in Flanders 291 

Gudule, he leaves the shops, the cafes, and the 
boulevards behind him and enters the past. 

The small shopmen, and the men and women of 
the markets, all look and talk Flemish, and the 
environment is everywhere as distinctly Flemish 
as if one were standing on one of the little bridges 
which cross the waterways of Ghent or Bruges. 

The men and women are broad-bodied and 
coarse-featured, — quite different from the Dutch, 
one remarks, — and they move slowly and with 
apparent difficulty in their clumsy sabots and 
heavy clothing. The houses round about are tall 
and slim, and mostly in that state of antiquity 
and decay which we like to think is artistic. 

Such is Flemish Brussels. Even in the Flemish 
part, the city has none of that winsome sym- 
pathetic air which usually surrounds a quaint 
mediaeval bourg. Rather it gives one the impres- 
sion that old traditions are all but dead and that 
it is mere improvidence and laisser-aller that 
allows them to exist. 

Flemish Brussels is picturesque enough, but it 
is squalid, except for the magnificent Hotel do 
Ville, which stands to-day in all the glory that it 
did when Charles V. of Spain ruled the destinies 
of the country. 

It was in the square in front of the Hotel de 
Ville that Alva gloated over the flowing blood of 
his victims as it ran from the scaffold. 

The churches of Brussels, as might be supposed 
from the historical importance of the city in the 
past, are numerous and celebrated, at least they 



292 The Automobilist Abroad 

are characteristically Flemish in much of their 
belongings, though the great cathedral of Ste. 
Gudule itself is Gothic of the unmistakable French 
variety. 

Brussels, its cathedrals, its Hotel de Ville, its 
Cloth Hall, and its Corporation or Guild Houses, 
and many more splendid architectural sites and 
scenes are all powerful attractions for sightseers. 

We went from Brussels to Ghent, forty-eight 
kilometres, and still over pave. The bicyclist is 
better catered for; he has cinder side-paths al- 
most all over Belgium, and accordingly he should 
enjoy his touring in occidental and oriental 
Flanders even more than the automobilist. 

Ghent was one day a seaport of rank, much 
greater rank than that of to-day, for only a sort 
of sea-going canal-boat, a chaland or a caboteur, 
ever comes up the canals to the wharves. 

Ghent is a great big town, but it does not seem 
in the least like a city in spite of its hundred and 
fifty thousand inhabitants. Its churches, its bel- 
fry, its chateau, and its museum are the chief 
sights for tourists — automobilists and others. 
We visited them all after lunch, which was eaten 
(and paid for at Paris prices) at the Hotel de la 
Poste, and covered another forty-six kilometres 
of pave, before we turned in for the night at 
Bruges' Hotel du Sablon. There are others, but 
the Hotel du Sablon at Bruges was modest in its 
price, efficient in its service, and excellent in its 
catering. The chief delicacy of the menu here is 
the mossel. One eats mussels (mossels) in Bel- 



On the Road in Flanders 293 

gium — if he will — and it's hard for one to es- 
cape them. They are monies in France, mossels 
in Belgium and Holland, and mussels in England. 
They are a sea food which has never tickled the 
American palate; but, after many refusals and 
much resentment, we ate them — and found them 
good. 

Bruges' sights are similar to those of Ghent, 
except that its belfry is more splendid and more 
famous and the Memlings of the Hopital St. Jean 
draw crowds of art lovers to Bruges who never 
even stop at Ghent. 

Our little run around Belgium, a sort of willy- 
nilly blowing about by the North Sea winds, 
drew us next to Ostende. If there is one place 
more splendidly chic than Ostende it is Monte 
Carlo. The palm is still with Monte Carlo, but, 
for August at any rate, Ostende, with its Digue, 
its hotels and terrace cafes and restaurants, is 
the very glass of fashion and fashionables. 

It was only on entering Ostende, over the last 
few kilometres of the road from Bruges, just 
where it borders the Slykens Canal, that we met 
anything deserving to be called a good road since 
leaving the neighbourhood of Namur. The roads 
of Belgium served a former generation very well, 
but tempus fugit, and the world advances, and 
really Belgium's highways are a disgrace to the 
country. 

The chief attraction of Ostende — after the 
great hotels — is its Digue, or Dyke, a great long- 
drawn-out breakwater against whose cemented 



294 The Automobilist Abroad 

walls pound the furies of the North Sea with such 
a virulence and force as to make one seasick even 
on land. ' ' See our Digue and die, ' ' say the fisher- 
folk of Ostende, — those that have not been 
crowded out by the palace hotels, — ' ' See our 
Digue and eat our oysters. ' ' 

Ostende is attractive, save on the August bank 
holiday, when the trippers come from London; 
then it looks like Margate or Southend so far as 
its crowds are concerned, and accordingly is 
frightful. 

One should not leave Belgium without visiting 
Ypres, that is if he wants to know what a highly 
respectable and thriving small city of Belgium is 
like. 

Ypres is typical of the best, though unfortu- 
nately, by whichever road you approach, you still 
make your way over granite blocks, none too well 
laid or cared for. The best and almost only way 
to avoid them is to take to the by-roads and trust 
to finding your way about. This is not difficult 
with the excellent map of the Automobile Club de 
Belgique, but it requires some ingenuity to under- 
stand the native who answers your inquiry in bad 
French and worse Walloon or Flemish. 

At Ypres the Hotel de la Chatellenie will care 
for you and your automobile very well, though its 
garage is nothing to boast of. Both meals and 
beds are good, and the rates are cheap, something 
less than nine francs a day for birds of passage. 
You must pay extra for wine, but beer is thrown 
in, thick, sticky, sugary beer, but it's better than 




< ~7~j6mys Seen 




&? ^/uncfers 




Ostende. — Canal at Bruges. — Milk Cart 



On the Road in Flanders 295 

England's " bitter," or the lager of Rotter- 
dam. 

Ypres is full of interesting buildings, but its 
Hotel de Ville and its Cloth Hall, with its lace- 
like facade, are easily the best. Ypres has a mu- 
seum which, like most provincial museums, has 
some good things and some bad ones, a stuffed 
elephant, some few good pictures, sea-shells, the 
instruments which beheaded the Comte d'Egmont, 
and some wooden sculptures; variety enough to 
suit the most catholic tastes. 

From Ypres we continued our zigzag through 
Belgium, following most of the time dirt roads 
which, though not of superlative excellence, were 
an improvement on stone blocks. It took us prac- 
tically all day to reach Antwerp, a hundred and 
thirty kilometres away. 

Belgium is everywhere quaint and curious, a 
sort of a cross between Holland and France, but 
more like the former than the latter in its mode 
of life, its food and drink and its industries, ex- 
cept perhaps in the country between Tournai and 
Liege. 

The country between Antwerp and Brussels 
affords a good general idea of Belgium. Its level 
surface presents, in rapid succession, rich 
meadows, luxuriant corn-fields, and green hedge- 
rows, with occasional patches of woodland. The 
smallness of the fields tells amongst how many 
hands the land is divided, and prepares one for 
the knowledge that East Flanders is the most 
thickly peopled corner of Europe. The exception 



296 The Automobilist Abroad 

to this general character of the scenery is found 
in the valley of the Meuse, where the fruitful se- 
renity of fertile meadows and pastoral hamlets is 
varied by bolder, more irregular, and more strik- 
ing natural features. Hills and rocks, bluff head- 
lands and winding valleys, with beautiful stretches 
of river scenery, give a charm to the landscape 
which Belgium in general does not display. 

The geographical description of Antwerp is as 
follows : 

Antwerp, in Flemish Antwerpen, the chief 
town of the province of that name, is situated 
in a plain 51° 13' 16" north latitude, and 2° 
3' 55" east longitude, twenty leagues from the sea, 
on the right bank of the Scheldt. 

The Hotel du Grand-Laboureur was marked 
out for us as the automobile hotel of Antwerp. 
There was no doubt about this, when we saw the 
A. C. F., the A. C. B., and the M. C. B. signs on 
its facade. It is a very excellent establishment, 
but you pay extra for wine, or you drink beer in- 
stead. 

The sights of Antwerp are too numerous to be 
covered in the short time that was at our disposal 
on this occasion, but we gave some time to the 
works and shrine of the master Rubens, and the 
wonderful cathedral spire, and the Hotel de Ville 
and the Guild Houses and all the rest, not forget- 
ting Quentin Matsys 's well. We were, however, a 
practical party, and the shipping of the great 
port, the gay cafes, and the busy life of Antwerp's 
marts of trade also appealed to us. 




A Street in Antwerp 



On the Road in Flanders 297 

Antwerp is a wonderful storehouse of many 
things. "It is in the streets of Antwerp and 
Brussels," said Sir Walter Scott, " that the eye 
still rests upon the forms of architecture which 
appear in pictures of the Flemish school." . . . 
" This rich intermixture of towers and battle- 
ments and projecting windows highly sculptured 
produces an effect as superior to the tame uni- 
formity of a modern street as the casque of the 
warrior exhibits over the slouch-brimmed beaver 
of a Quaker." This was true of Sir Walter 
Scott's time, and it is true to-day. 



7?(fm//ft 




209 



CHAPTER II 

BY DYKES AND WINDMILLS 

Holland for automobilists is a land of one hill 
and miles and miles of brick-paved roads, so well 
laid with tiny bricks, and so straight and so level 
that it is almost an automobilist's paradise. 

We had come from Belgium to Holland, from 
Antwerp to Breda, a little short of fifty kilo- 
metres, to make a round of Dutch towns by auto- 
mobile, as we had done in the old days by the 
humble bicycle. 

Custom-house regulations are not onerous in 
Holland. The law says you must pay five per 
cent, duty on entering the country, or at the dis- 
cretion of the authorities, bona-fide tourists will 
be given a temporary permit to ' ' circulate ' ' free. 
There are no speed limits in Holland, but you 
must not drive to "the common danger. The first 
we were glad to know, the second we did not pro- 
pose to do. 

As we passed the frontier the douaniers re- 
turned to their fishing opposite the little cabaret 
where we had some needed refreshment. It is 
curious what satisfaction middle-class officialdom 
in Continental Europe gets out of fishing. It is 

801 



302 The Automobilist Abroad 

their one passion, apparently, if their work lies 
near a well-stocked stream. The chef de bureau 
goes fishing, the commissionnaire goes fishing, 
and everybody goes fishing. A peaceful and in- 
nocent exercise for those who like it, but one 
which is inexplicable to an outsider. 

Soon we are stopped at a toll-gate. The toll- 
gatekeeper still exists in Holland, chiefly on pri- 
vate bridges. He loses a good deal of his mone- 
tary return, however, as he has a lazy habit of 
putting out a great wooden sabot to collect the 
fees, he, meanwhile, fishing or dozing some dis- 
tance away. 

If you are a bad shot your coin sometimes goes 
overboard, or being an automobilist, and there- 
fore down on all impositions, you simply do not 
put any more coins in the sabots and think to de- 
pend on your speed to take you out of any brew- 
ing trouble. This old relic of the middle ages is 
sure to decrease in Holland with the progress of 
the automobile. 

Holland is a beautiful country, one of Nature's 
daintiest creations, where the sun and the moon 
and the sky seem to take the greatest delight in 
revealing their manifold charms, where the green 
fields and the clear-cut trees and the rushing 
rivers and the sluggish canals all seem to have 
been put in their place to conform to an artistic 
landscape design — for, truly, Holland is a vast 
picture. Its cattle are picture cattle, its myriad 
windmills seem to stand as alluring models to 
attract the artist, its sunsets, the haze that rests 



By Dykes and Windmills 303 

over its fields, its farms, its spick and span houses, 
its costumes — all seem to belong to the para- 
phernalia of pictorial art. It is a paradise for 
motorists who behave themselves, and do not 
rouse the ire of the Dutchman. The regulations 
are exceedingly lenient, but the laws against fast 
speeding must not be disregarded, and the loud 
blowing of horns, on deserted streets in the middle 
of the night, is entirely forbidden. 

When tourists have scaled every peak and 
trodden every pass, let them descend once again 
to the lowlands and see if they cannot find pleas- 
urable profit in a land whose very proximity to 
the borders of the sea gives it a character all its 
own. This is Holland, and this is the attitude 
with which a party of four faced it at Breda and 
planned the tour outlined in the following pages. 

We stopped at Breda to take breath and to 
reconnoitre a little. Breda has a population of 
twenty thousand, and a good hotel, " Der Kroon," 
which knows well how to care for automobilists. 
Breda to Dordrecht is perhaps twenty-five kilo- 
metres in a straight line, but by the highroad, via 
Gorinchem, it is sixty-eight. Since there are no 
amphibious automobiles as yet, and there are no 
facile means of crossing the Hollandsch Diep, the 
detour must be made. 

A stroll round Breda, to brush up our history 
of the siege, a view of the chateau inside and out, 
including the reminders of Count Henry of 
Nassau and William III. of England, and we 
were on the road again by three in the afternoon. 



304 The Automobilist Abroad 

Dordrecht and its Hotel Belle- Vue, on the 
Boomstraat, saw us for dinner that night. The 
trip had been without incident, save for the 
eternal crossing of canals by high-peaked donkey- 
back bridges which demanded careful driving till 
you found out what was on the other side of the 
crest, and the continual dodging from one side of 
the road to the other to avoid running over chil- 
dren at play. Clearly Holland, in this respect, 
was not far different from other countries. 

Dordrecht is delightful and is as nearly canal- 
surrounded as Amsterdam or Venice,- only it is 
not so large, and automobilists must look out or 
they will tumble overboard when taking a sharp 
corner. 

You may eat, if you like, on the balcony of the 
Hotel Belle- Vue, and you may watch the throng 
of passers-by strolling through the courtyard of 
the hotel, from one street to another, as if it were 
a public thoroughfare. The only objection to it 
is that you fear for the safety of the loose things 
which you left in your automobile, but as you pay 
a franc for housing it the responsibility falls on 
the proprietor. No one ever heard of anything 
going astray, which argues well for the honesty 
of the people of Dordrecht. 

The distant view of Dordrecht, with a few 
spotted cattle in the foreground, might well pass 
for a tableau of Cuyps, but as all Dutch land- 
scapes look more or less alike, at least they all 
look Dutch, this description of Dordrecht perhaps 
does not define it very precisely. 



By Dykes and Windmills 305 

Of course Dordrecht itself is typically Dutch; 
one would not expect anything else of a place with 
a name like that. The tree-covered wharves and 
the typical Dutch crowds, the dog-drawn little 
carts and the " morning waker," are all there. 
Above all, almost in Venetian splendour, looms 
the great lone tower of the church of St. Mary, 
the Grroote Kerk of the town. For six hundred 
years it has been a faithful guardian of the spir- 
itual welfare of the people, and the ruggedness of 
its fabric has well stood the test of time, built of 
brick though it is. 

Dordrecht is vulgarly and colloquially known 
as Dordt, or Dort, and, as such, is referred to in 
history and literature in a manner which often 
puzzles the stranger. It is one of the most an- 
cient cities of Holland, and, in the middle ages, 
the most busy in its intercourse with the outside 
world. 

We left Dordrecht in the early morning, expect- 
ing to cover quickly the twenty-seven kilometres 
to Rotterdam. Ever and ever the thin wisps of 
black smoke streaked into the sky from the flat 
directly ahead, but not until we had almost 
plumped down on the Boompjes itself did things 
take material shapes and forms. 

There are many things to do and see at Rotter- 
dam, but the great, ceaseless commerce of the 
great world-port is one of the marvels which is 
often sniffed at and ignored; yet nowhere in any 
port in Europe or America, unless it be at Ant- 



306 The Automobilist Abroad 

werp. is there to be seen such a ship-filled river as 
at Rotterdam on the Maa- 

The Hotel Weimar on the Spanishkade, and the 

Maas Hotel on the Boompjes. eater for the auto- 

mobilist at rather high prices, but in an intelligent 

•?pt that they charge a franc for ga- 

. ng your machine overnight. We f onnd the 
same thing at Dordrecht; and in general Que ifl 
the custom all over Holland. 

We left the automobile to rest a day at Rotter- 
dam while we took a little trip by water, to Gouda, 
famed for its cheeses. It is an unworlcL 
place, though its commerce in eheeaes is mormons. 
Et& opulation. when it does travel, goes mostly by 
boat on the Maas. You pay an astonishingly 
small sum, and you ride nearly half a day. from 
I erdam to Gouda. amid a mixed freight of lov- 
able fat little Dutch women with gold spiral 
trinkets in their ears, little calves and cows, pigs, 
duck-, hens, and what not. and on the return trip 
amid a boat-load of pungent eh 

We got back to Rotterdam for the night, having 
spent a tranquil, enjoyable day on one of the chief 
waterways of Holland, a foretaste of a projr 
tour yet to come, to be made by automobile boat 
when the opportunity com - 

one. not even the most naive unsophisticated 
and gushing of travellers, has ever had the temer- 
ity to signa :erdam as a city of celebrated 
art. But it is a fondly interesting place neverthe- 

38, far more so indeed than many a less lively 
mart of trade. 



By Dykes and Windmills 307 

As we slowly drifted our way into the city at 
dusk of a long June evening, on board that little 
slow-going canal and river-craft from Gouda — 
known by so few casual travellers, but which are 
practically water stage-coaches to the native — it 
was very beautiful. 

The brilliant crimson sun-streaks latticed the 
western sky, the masts, spars, and sail& of the 
quay-side shipping silhouetted themselves stereo- 
scopically against this gleaming background, and 
the roar and grime of the city's wheels of trade 
blended themselves into a melange which was as 
intoxicating to the artist and rhapsodist as would 
have been more hallowed ground. 

We left Rotterdam at eight-thirty on a misty 
morning which augured that we should be deluged 
with rain forthwith ; but all signs fail in Holland 
with regard to weather, for we hardly passed the 
Delftsche Poort, the great Renaissance gateway 
through which one passes to Delft, Schiedam, The 
Hague, and all the well-worn place names of 
Dutch history, before a rift of sunlight streaked 
through the clouds and framed a typical Holland 
landscape in as golden and yellow a light as one 
might see in Venice. It was remarkable, in every 
sense of the word, and we had good weather 
throughout a week of days when storm was all 
around and about us. 

Schiedam, with its windmills, is well within 
sight of Rotterdam. We had all of us seen wind- 
mills before, but we never felt quite so intimately 
acquainted with any as with these. Don Quixote's 



308 The Automobilist Abroad 

was but a thing of the imagination, and Daudet's, 
in Provence, was but a dismantled, unlovely, and 
unromantic ruin. These windmills of Schiedam 
were very sturdy and practical things, broad of 
base and long of arm, and would work even in a 
fog, an ancient mariner-looking Dutchman with 
sabots and peg-top trousers told us. 

The windmills of Holland pump water, grind 
corn, make cheese and butter, and have recently 
been adopted in some instances to the making of 
electricity. It has been found that with a four- 
winged mill, and the wind at a velocity of from 
twelve to thirty feet a second, four to five horse- 
power can be obtained with the loss of only four- 
teen per cent., caused by friction. 

A plant has been constructed in Holland which 
lights 450 lamps, earning about twelve per cent, 
interest on the capital invested. Of course it is 
necessary to keep an oil-motor to provide for 
windless days or nights and also to keep a reserve 
of electrical power on hand; but this is but an- 
other evidence of the practicality and the extreme 
cleverness of the Dutch. The cows that browse 
around the windmills of Schiedam are of the same 
spotted black and white variety that one sees on 
the canvasses of the Dutch painters. If you are 
not fortunate enough to see Paul Potter's great 
Dutch bull in the gallery at The Hague, you may 
see the same sort of thing hereabouts at any 
glance of the eye — the real living thing. 

From Rotterdam to Delft, all the way by the 
canal, allowing for the detour via Schiedam, is 



By Dykes and Windmills 309 

less than twenty kilometres, and the journey is 
short for any sort of an automobile that will go 
beyond a snail's pace. 

Visions of blue and white delftware passed 
through our minds as we entered the old town, 
which hardly looks as though worldly automo- 
bilists would be well received. Delftware there 
is, in abundance, for the delectation of the tourist 
and the profit of the curio merchant, who will sell 
it unblushingly as a rare old piece, when it was 
made but a year ago. If you know delftwar9 
you will know from the delicate colouring of tha 
blues and whites which is old and which is not. 

Delft and Delftshaven, near Schiedam, in South 
Holland, have a sentimental interest for all de- 
scendants of the Puritans who fled to America in 
1620. Delftshaven is an unattractive place 
enough to-day, but Delft itself is more dignified, 
and, in a way, takes on many of the attributes of 
a metropolis. Nearly destroyed by a fire in 1526, 
the present city has almost entirely been built up 
since the sixteenth century. 

The old Gothic church of the fifteenth century, 
one of the few remains of so early a date, shelters 
the tomb of the redoubtable Van Tromp, the van- 
quisher of the English. 

It was easy going along the road out of Delft 
and we reached The Hague in time for lunch at 
the Hotel des Indes, where, although it is the 
leading hotel of the Dutch capital, everything is 
as French as it would be in Lyons, or at any rate 
in Brussels. You pay the astonishingly outra- 



310 The Automobilist Abroad 

geous sunt of five francs for housing your machine 
over night, but nothing for the time you are eat- 
ing lunch. We got away from the gay little 
capital, one of the daintiest of all the courts of 
Europe, as soon as we had made a round of the 
stock sights of which the guide-books tell, not 
omitting, of course, the paintings of the Hague 
Gallery, the Rubens, the Van Dycks and the 
Holbeins. 

The Binnenhof drew the romanticist of our 
party to it by reason of the memories of the 
brothers De Witt. It is an irregular collection of 
buildings of all ages, most of them remodelled, 
but once the conglomerate residence of the Counts 
of Holland and the Stadtholders. 

The Binnenhof will interest all readers of 
Dumas. It was here that there took place the cul- 
minating scenes in the lives of the brothers De 
Witt, Cornelius and John. Dumas unquestion- 
ably manufactured much of his historical detail, 
but in the ' ' Black Tulip ' ' there was no exaggera- 
tion of the bloody incidents of the murder of these 
two noble men, who really had the welfare of Hol- 
land so much at heart. 

We headed down the road to the sea, by the 
Huis-ten-Bosch (the House in the Wood), the 
summer palace of Dutch royalty, for the Monte 
Carlo of Holland, Scheveningen. It has all the 
conventional marks of a Continental watering- 
place, a plage, a kursaale, bath houses, terraces, 
esplanades, chic hotels and restaurants, and a 
whole regiment of mushroom chairs and wind- 



1 

1 L, v/ Jj 




1 £tfsEI 




m SCH EVE *■ ■ *' <-*■ ™^% 







By Dykes and Windmills 311 

shields dotting its wide expanse of North Sea 
sand. 

In the season the inhabitants live off of the 
visitors, and out of season live on their fat like 
the ground-hog, and do a little fishing for profit- 
able amusement. It is a thing to see, Scheve- 
ningen, but it is no place for a prolonged stay un- 
less you are a gambler or a blase boulevardier 
who needs bracing up with sea air. 

There are good hotels, if you want to linger 
and can stand the prices, the best of which is 
called the Palace Hotel, but we had another little 
black coffee on the gayest-looking terrace cafe 
we could find, and made wheel-tracks for Leyden, 
twenty kilometres distant. 

The distances in Holland are mere bagatelles, 
but there is so much that is strange to see, and 
the towns of historical interest are so near to- 
gether, that the automobilist who covers his hun- 
dred kilometres a day must be a scorcher indeed. 

We passed the night at the Gouden-Leuw, which 
a Frenchman would call the Lion d'Or, and an 
Anglo-Saxon the Golden Lion. It was a most ex- 
cellent hotel in the Breestraat, and it possessed 
what was called a garage, in reality a cubby -hole 
which, on a pinch, might accommodate two auto- 
mobiles, if they were small ones. 

Leyden is a city of something like fifty-five 
thousand people. It has grown since the days 
when they chained down Bibles in its churches, 
and books in the library of its university. The 
chief facts that stand out in Leyden 's history, for 



312 The Automobilist Abroad 

the visitor, are those referring to the exile of the 
Puritans here, fleeing from persecution in Eng- 
land, and before they descended upon the New 
World. 

The famous university was founded by the gov- 
ernment as a reward for the splendid defence 
made by the city against the Spaniards in 1574. 
It was a question as to whether the city should be 
exempted from future taxation or should be en- 
dowed with a university. The citizens themselves 
chose the latter dignity. 

Leaving Leyden and following the flat roadway 
by the glimmering canals, which chop the polders 
and tulip gardens off into checker-board squares, 
one reaches Haarlem, less than thirty kilometres 
away. 

The country was becoming more and more like 
what one imagines Holland ought to be; the 
whole country practically a vast, sandy, sea-girt 
land of dykes and canals, and dunes and sunken 
gardens. 

Holland has an area of about twenty thousand 
square miles, and something over five million 
inhabitants, with the greatest density of popula- 
tion on the coast between Amsterdam, in the 
north, and Rotterdam, in the south, and the few- 
est in numbers in the region immediately to the 
northward of the Zuyder-Zee. 

Wherever in Holland one strikes the brick 
roads, made from little red bricks standing on 
end, he is happy. There is no dust and there are 
no depressions in the surface which will upset 



By Dykes and Windmills 313 

the carburation and jar the bolts off your ma- 
chine. It is an expensive way of road-building, 
one thinks, but it is highly satisfactory. Near 
Haarlem these brick roadways extend for miles 
into the open country in every direction. 

Haarlem is the centre of the bulb country, the 
gardens where are grown the best varieties of 
tulips and hyacinths known over all the world as 
" Dutch bulbs." The tulip beds of the polders 
and sunken gardens of the neighbourhood of 
Haarlem are one of the great sights of Hol- 
land. 

Besides bulbs, Haarlem is noted for its ship- 
liiing church, and the pictures by Franz Hals in 
the local gallery. There are other good Hals 
elsewhere, but the portraits of rotund, jolly men 
and women of his day, in the Haarlem Town Hall, 
are unapproached by those of any of his con- 
temporaries. Fat, laughing burghers, roystering, 
knickerbockered Dutchmen and vrous gossiping, 
smoking, laughing, or drinking, are human docu- 
ments of the time more graphic than whole vol- 
umes of fine writing or mere repetitions of his- 
torical fact. All these attributes has Haarlem's 
collection of paintings by Franz Hals. 

There are all sorts of ways of getting from 
Haarlem to Amsterdam, by train, by boat, by elec- 
tric tram, or by automobile over an idyllic road, 
tree-shaded, canal-bordered, and dustless. It is 
sixteen kilometres only, and it is like running over 
a causeway laid out between villas and gardens. 
Nothing quite like it exists elsewhere, in Holland 



314 The Automobilist Abroad 

or out of it. An automobile can be very high- 
geared, for there are no hills except the donkey- 
back bridges over the canals. 

Amsterdam may properly enough be called the 
Venice of the North, and the automobilist will 
speedily find that an automobile boat will do him 
much better service in town than anything that 
runs on land. 

There are half a million souls in Amsterdam, 
and hotels of all ranks and prices. The Bible 
Hotel is as good as any, but they have no garage, 
nor indeed have any of the others. There are 
half a dozen " Grands Garages "in the city (with 
their signs written in French — the universal lan- 
guage of automobilism), and the hotel porter will 
jump up on the seat beside you and pilot you on 
your way, around sharp corners, over bridges, 
and through arcades until finally you plump down 
in as up-to-date and conveniently arranged an 
establishment for housing your machine as you 
will find in any land. 

Amsterdam's sights will occupy the visitor for 
a couple of days, and its art gallery for a day 
longer. We were taking only a bird's-eye view, 
or review, and stayed only over one night, not 
making even the classic excursion to those artists' 
haunts of Volendam, Monnikendam, and Marken, 
of which no book on Holland should fail to make 
mention. 

These old Dutch towns of the Zuyder-Zee are 
unique in all the world, and Amsterdam is the 
gateway to them. An automobile is useless for 



By Dykes and Windmills 315 

reaching them. The best means are those offered 
by existing boat and tram lines. 

For Utrecht one leaves Amsterdam via the 
Amstel Dyke and the Utrechtsche Zyde, and after 
forty kilometres of roadway, mostly brick-paved 
like that between Haarlem and Amsterdam, he 
reaches suburban Utrecht. Utrecht, with but a 
hundred thousand inhabitants, has suburbs, reach- 
ing out in every direction, that would do justice 
to a city five times its size. Most of Utrecht's 
population is apparently suburban, and is housed 
in little brick houses and villas with white trim- 
mings and door-steps, a bulb garden, an iron 
fence, and a miniature canal flowing through the 
back yard. This is the formula for laying out a 
Utrecht suburban villa. 

The Het Kasteel van Antwerpen, on the Oude 
Gracht, is a hotel which treats you very well for 
five or six florins a day, and allows you also to put 
your automobile under roof, charging nothing for 
the service. This is worth making a note of in 
a country where it usually costs from one to five 
francs a night for your automobile. 

The chief sight of Utrecht is its cathedral, with 
a fine Gothic tower over a hundred metres in 
height. It is the proper thing to mount to its 
highest landing, whence one gets one of the most 
remarkable bird's-eye views imaginable. In a 
flat country like Holland, the wide-spread pano- 
ramas, taken from any artificial height, embrace 
an extent of the world's surface not elsewhere 
to be taken in by a glance of the eye. The Zuyder- 



316 The Automobilist Abroad 

Zee and the lowlands of the north stretch out 
to infinity on one side; to the east the silver- 
spreading streaks of the Waal and the Oude Rijn 
(later making the Rhine) lead off toward Ger- 
many. To the south are the green-grown prairies 
and windmill-outlined horizons of South Holland ; 
and westward are the polders and dunes of the 
region between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and 
even a glimpse, on a clear day, of the North Sea 
itself. 

Our one long ride in Holland was from Utrecht 
to Nymegen, seventy-two kilometres. We left 
Utrecht after lunch and slowly made our way 
along the picture landscapes of the Holland 
countryside, through Hobbema avenues, and 
under the shadow of quaint Dutch church 
spires. 

One does not go to a foreign land to enjoy only 
the things one sees in cities. Hotels, restaurants, 
and cafes are very similar all over Europe, and 
the great shops do not vary greatly in Rotterdam 
from those in Liverpool. It is with the small 
things of life, the doings of the butcher, the baker, 
and the candlestick-maker that the change comes 
in. In Holland the housekeeper buys her milk 
from a little dog-drawn cart and can be waked at 
three in the morning, without fail, by leaving an 
order the night before with the " morning 
waker." If you do not have a fire going all the 
time, and want just enough to cook your dinner 
with, you go out and buy a few lumps of blazing 
coals. If it is boiling water you want for your 



By Dykes and Windmills 317 

coffee, you go out and buy it too. Holland must 
be a housekeeper's paradise. 

Nymegen, on the Waal, cared for us for the 
night. On the morrow we were to cross the 
frontier and enter Germany and the road by the 
Rhine. 

Nymegen and its Hotel Keizer Karel, on the 
Keizer Karel Plain, was a vivid memory of what 
a stopping-place for the night between two ob- 
jective points should be. 

The city was delightful, its tree-grown boule- 
vards, its attractive cafes, the music playing in 
the park, and all the rest was an agreeable inter- 
lude, and the catering — if an echo of things Pa- 
risian — was good and bountiful. There was no 
fuss and feathers when we arrived or when we 
left, and not all the personnel of the hotel, from 
the boots to the manager, were hanging around 
for tips. The head waiter and the chambermaid 
were in evidence; that was all. The rest were 
discreetly in the background. 




r< 



810 



CHAPTER III 

ON THE EOAD BY THE RHINE 

We had followed along the lower reaches of the 
Rhine, through the little land of dykes and wind- 
mills, when the idea occurred to us : why not make 
the Rhine tour en automobile? This, perhaps, 
was no new and unheard-of thing, but the Rhine 
tour is classic and should not be left out of any 
one's travelling education, even if it is old-fash- 
ioned. 

At Nymegen we saw the last of Holland and 
soon crossed the frontier. There were no restric- 
tions then in force against the entrance of foreign 
automobiles, though we were threatened with new 
and stringent regulations soon to be put in force. 
(1906. A full resume of these new regulations 
will be found in the appendix.) Legally Germany 
could demand eight marks a hundred kilos for 
the weight of our machine, but in practice all 
tourists were admitted free, provided one could 
convince the official that he intended to return 
across the frontier within a reasonable time. 

As we crossed the railway line we made our 
obeisance to the German customs authorities, 
saluted the black and white barber 's-pole stripes 

321 



322 The Automobilist Abroad 

of the frontier post, and filled up our tanks with 
gasoline, which had now assumed the name of 
benzin, instead of benzine, as in Holland. 

Emmerich, Cleves, Wesel, and Xanten are not 
tourist points, and in spite of the wealth of his- 
tory and romance which surrounds their very 
names, they had little attraction for us. For once 
we were going to make a tour of convention. 

It is a fairly long step from Nymegen to Diis 
seldorf, one hundred and one kilometres, but we 
did it between breakfast and lunch, in spite of 
the difficulty of finding our way about by roads 
and regulations which were new to us. 

The low, flat banks of the Rhine below Diissel- 
dorf have much the same characteristics that they 
have in Holland, and, if the roadways are some- 
times bad as to surface — and they are terrible 
in the neighbourhood of Crefield — they are at 
least flat and otherwise suited to speed, though 
legally you are held down to thirty kilometres an 
hour. 

You may find anything you like in the way of 
hotel accommodation at Diisseldorf, from the Park 
Hotel on the Cornelius Platz, at Waldorf prices, 
to the modest and characteristic little German inn 
by the name of Prince Alexanders Hof, which is 
as cheap as a French hotel of its class, and about 
as good. 

It is at Diisseldorf that one comes first into 
touch with the German institutions in all their 
completeness. Immediately one comes to the 
borders of the Rhine he comes into the sphere of 



322 The Automobilist Abroad 

of the frontier post, and filled up our tanks with 
gasoline, which had now assumed the name of 
benzin, instead of benzine, as in Holland. 

Emmerich, Cleves, Wesel, and Xanten are not 
tourist points, and in spite of the wealth of his- 
tory and romance which surrounds their very 
names, they had little attraction for us. For once 
we were going to make a tour of convention. 

It is a fairly long step from Nymegen to Diis- 
seldorf, one hundred and one kilometres, but we 
did it between breakfast and lunch, in spite of 
the difficulty of finding our way about by roads 
and regulations which were new to us. 

The low, flat banks of the Rhine below Diissel- 
dorf have much the same characteristics that they 
have gf^oR9M, «&<£# Wfoadways are some- 
times Tfad as to surface — and they are terrible 
>bourhood of Crefield — they are at 
t and otherwise suited to speed, though 
ou are held down to thirty kilometres an 
hour. 

You may find anything you like in the way of 
hotel accommodation at Diisseldorf, from the Park 
Hotel on the Cornelius Platz, at Waldorf prices, 
to the modest and characteristic little German inn 
by the name of Prince Alexanders Hof, which is 
as cheap as a French hotel of its class, and about 
as good. 

It is at Diisseldorf that one comes first into 
touch with the German institutions in all their 
completeness. Immediately one comes to the 
borders of the Rhine he comes into the sphere of 



On the Road by the Rhine 323 

world politics. The peace of Europe lies buried 
at the mouth of the Scheldt where the Rhine en- 
ters the sea, and not on the Bosphorus. " The 
Rhine is the King of Rivers," said a German poli- 
tician, " and it is our fault if its mouth remains 
in the hands of foreigners." This is warlike talk, 
if you like, but if a German prince some day rises 
on the throne of Holland, there may be a new- 
made map of Europe which will upset all exist- 
ing treaties and conventions. 

Diisseldorf is a veritable big town, for, though 
it shelters two hundred and twenty-five thousand 
inhabitants, it is not " citified." It is one of the 
most lovely of Rhine towns, and is the head- 
quarters of the Rhenish Westphalian Automobile 
Club. 

To Cologne is thirty-seven kilometres, with the 
roads still bad, — shockingly so we found them, 
though we were assured that this is unusual and 
that even then they were in a state of repair. 
This was evident, and in truth they needed it. 

The twin Gothic splendours of Cologne 's cathe- 
dral rise high in air long before one reaches the 
confines of the city. Cologne is the metropolis of 
the Rhine country, and besides its four hundred 
thousand inhabitants possesses many institutions 
and industries which other Rhine cities lack. 

Of hotels for automobilists at Cologne there 
are five, all of which will treat you in the real 
tourist fashion, and charge you accordingly, — 
overcharge you in fact. We did not have time to 
hunt up what the sentimentalist of the party 



324 The Automobilist Abroad 

aways called " a quaint little inn," and so we put 
into one almost under the shadow of the cathe- 
dral (purposely nameless). 

The sights of Cologne are legion. " Numer- 
ous churches, all very ancient " describes them 
well enough for an itinerary such as this; the 
guide-books must do the rest. The Kolner Auto- 
mobile Club will supply the touring automobilist 
graciously and gratuitously with information. 
A good thing to know! 

The beer and concert gardens of Cologne's 
waterside are famous, almost as famous as the 
relics of the " three kings " in the cathedral. 

At Cologne the pictured, storied Rhine begins. 
A skeleton itinerary is given at the end of this 
chapter which allows some digression here for 
observations of a pertinent kind. 

Let the traveller not be disappointed with the 
first glance at the river as he sees it at Cologne. 
He is yet a few miles below the banks which have 
gained for the stream its fame for surpassing 
beauty, but higher up it justifies the rhapsodies 
of the poet. 

" A blending of all beauties : streams and dells, 
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine, 
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells 
From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells. 

" And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind, 
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, 
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind, 
Or holding dark communion with the cloud. 
There was a day when they were young and proud, 



On the Road by the Rhine 325 

Banners on high, and battles passed below : 

But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, 

And those which wav'd are shredless dust ere now, 

And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow. 

" Beneath battlements, within those walls, 

Power dwelt amidst her passions : in proud state, 

Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, 

Doing his evil will, nor less elate 

Than mightier heroes of a longer date. 

What want these outlaws conquerors should have? 

But History's purchas'd page to call them great? 

A wider space, an ornamented grave ? 

Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave." 

The scenery, the history and legend, and the 
wines of the Rhine make up the complete list of 
the charms of the river for the enthusiastic voy- 
ager on its bosom or on its banks. 

It is enjoyable enough when one is on the deck 
of a Rhine steamboat, or would be if one were 
not so fearfully crowded, but it is doubly so when 
one is travelling along its banks by roadways 
which, from here on, improve greatly. 

The history and legend of the Rhine are too 
big a subject to handle here, but some facts about 
Rhine wine, picked up on the spot, may be of 
interest. 

The true German is not only eloquent when 
speaking of the quality of the Rhine wines, but 
he claims for them also the honours of antiquity. 
One may be content to date their history back 
merely to the days of Probus, but others declare 
that Bacchus only could be the parent of such 



326 The Automobilist Abroad 

admirable liquor, and point to Bacharach as the 
resting-place of the deity when he came to taste 
the Rhine grapes, and set an example to all 
future tipplers. It would not have been out of 
place to call the Rhine the country of Bacchus. 
The Rhine, Moselle, Neckar, and Main are gardens 
of the vine ; but the Germans have not been con- 
tent with cultivating the banks of rivers alone, 
for the higher lands are planted as well. From 
Bonn to Coblenz, and from the latter city to 
Mayence, the country is covered with vineyards. 
The Johannisberger of " father " Rhine, the 
Gruenhauser or the Brauneberger of the Moselle, 
and the Hochheimer of the Main, each distinguish 
and hallow their respective rivers in the eyes of 
the connoisseur in wine. 

The vineyards of the Rhine are a scene of sur- 
passing beauty; Erbach, enthroned among its 
vines ; Johannisberg, seated on a crescent hill of 
red soil, adorned with cheering vegetation; Mit- 
telheim, Geisenheim, and Rudesheim with its 
strong, fine-bodied wine, the grapes from which 
bask on their promontory of rock, in the summer 
sun, and imbibe its generous heat from dawn to 
setting; then again, on the other side, Bingen, 
delightful, sober, majestic, with its terraces of 
vines, topped by the chateau of Klopp. The 
river and its riches, the corn and fruit which the 
vicinity produces, all remind the stranger of a 
second Canaan. The Bingerloch, the ruins, and 
the never-failing vines scattered among them, 
like verdant youth revelling amid age and decay, 



On the Road by the Rhine 327 

give a picture nowhere else exhibited, uniting to 
the joyousness of wine the sober tinge of medita- 
tive feeling. The hills back the picture, covered 
with feudal relics or monastic remains, mingled 
with the purple grape. Landscapes of greater 
beauty, joined to the luxuriance of fruitful vine 
culture, can nowhere be seen. 

The glorious season of fruition — the Vintage 
— is the time for the visit of a wine-lover to the 
Rhine. It does not take place until the grapes 
are perfectly mature; they are then carefully 
gathered, and the bad fruit picked out, and, with 
the stalks, put aside. The wine of the pressing 
is separated, most vom ersten druck, vom nach- 
druch. The more celebrated of the wines are all 
fermented in casks; and then, after being re- 
peatedly racked, suffered to remain for years in 
large judders of 250 gallons, to acquire perfec- 
tion by time. The wines mellow best in large 
vessels; hence the celebrated Heidelberg tun, 
thirty-one feet long by twenty-one high, and hold- 
ing one hundred and fifty judders, or six hundred 
hogsheads. Tubingen, Griiningen, and Konig- 
stein (the last 3,709 hogsheads) could all boast 
of their enormous tuns, in which the white wines 
of the country were thought to mellow better than 
in casks of less dimensions. These tuns were 
once kept carefully filled. The Germans always 
had the reputation of being good drinkers, and 
of taking care of the " liquor they loved." Mis- 
son says in his " Travels," that he formerly saw 
at Nuremberg the public cellar, two hundred and 



328 The Automobilist Abroad 

fifty paces long, and containing twenty thousand 
ahms of wine. 

The names and birthplaces of the different 
German wines are interesting. The Liebfrauen- 
milch is a well-bodied wine, grown at Worms, 
and generally commands a good price. The same 
may be said of the wines of Koesterick, near 
Mayence; and those from Mount Scharlachberg 
are equally full-bodied and well-flavoured. Nier- 
stein, Oppenheim, Laubenheim, and Gaubischeim 
are considered to yield first growths, but that of 
Deidesheim is held to be the best. 

The river Main runs up to Frankfort close to 
Mayence; and on its banks the little town of 
Hochheim, once the property of General Keller- 
man, stands upon an elevated spot of ground, in 
the full blaze of the sun. From Hochheim is 
derived the name of Hock, too often applied by 
the unknowing to all German wines. There are 
no trees to obstruct the genial fire from the sky, 
which the Germans deem so needful to render 
their vintages propitious. The town stands in 
the midst of vineyards. 

The vineyard which produces the Hochheimer 
of the first growth is about eight acres in extent, 
and situated on a spot well sheltered from the 
north winds. The other growths of this wine 
come from the surrounding vineyards. The 
whole eastern bank of the Rhine to Lorich, called 
the Rheingau, has been remarkable centuries past 
for its wines. It was once the property of the 
Church. Near this favoured spot grows the 



On the Road by the Rhine 329 

Schloss-Johannisberger, once the property of the 
Church, and also of the Prince of Orange. 
Johannisberg is a town, with its castle (schloss) 
on the right bank of the Rhine below Mentz. The 
Johannisberger takes the lead in the wines of the 
Rhine. The vines are grown over the vaults of 
the castle, and were very near being destroyed 
by General Hoche. The quantity is not large. 

Rudesheim produces wines of the first Rhine 
growths; but the Steinberger, belonging to the 
Duke of Nassau, takes rank after the Schloss- 
Johannisberger among these wines. It has the 
greatest strength, and yet is one of the most deli- 
cate, and even sweetly flavoured. That called the 
" Cabinet " is the best. The quantity made is 
small, of the first growth. Graefenberg, which 
was once the property of the Church, produces 
very choice wine, which carries a price equal to 
the Rudesheim. 

Marcobrunner is an excellent wine, of a fine 
flavour, especially when the vintage has taken 
place in a warm year. The vineyards of Roth 
and Konigsbach grow excellent wines. The wine 
of Bacharach was formerly celebrated, but time 
produces revolutions in the history of wines, as 
well as in that of empires. 

On the whole the wines of Bischeim, Asmanns- 
hausen, and Laubenheim are very pleasant wines ; 
those of the most strength are Marcobrunner, 
Rudesheimer, and Niersteiner, while those of 
Johannisberg, Geisenheim, and Hochheim give 
the most perfect delicacy and aroma. The Ger- 



330 The Automobilist Abroad 

mans themselves say, " Rhein-wein, fein wein; 
Necker-wein, lecher wein; Franken-wein tranken 
wein; Mosel-wein, unnosel wein " (Rhine wine 
is good; Neckar pleasant; Frankfort bad; Mo- 
selle innocent). 

The red wines of the Rhine are not of ex- 
traordinary quality. The Asmannshauser is the 
best, and resembles some of the growths of 
France. Near Lintz, at Neuwied, a good wine, 
called Blischert, is made. Keinigsbach, on the 
left bank of the Rhine, Altenahr, Rech, and 
Kesseling, yield ordinary red growths. 

The Moselle wines are secondary to those of 
the Rhine and Main. The most celebrated is the 
Brauneberger. The varieties grown near Treves 
are numerous. A Dutch merchant is said to have 
paid the Abbey of Maximinus for a variety called 
Gruenhauser in 1793, no less than eleven hundred 
and forty-four florins for two hundred and ninety 
English gallons in the vat. This wine was for- 
merly styled the " Nectar of the Moselle." 

These wines are light, with a good flavour. 
They will not keep so long as the Rhine wines, 
but they are abundant and wholesome. Near 
Treves are grown the wines of Brauneberg, Weh- 
len, Graach, Zeltingen, and Piesport. The wines 
of Rinsport and Becherbach are considered of 
secondary rank. The wines of Cusel and Val- 
drach, near Treves, are thought to be possessed 
of diuretic properties. In about five years these 
wines reach the utmost point of perfection for 



On the Road by the Rhine 331 

drinking. They will not keep more than ten or 
twelve in prime condition. 

The wines called " wines of the Ahr " re- 
semble those of the Moselle, except that they will 
keep longer. 

The " wines of the Neckar " are made from 
the best French, Hungarian, and even Cyprus 
vines. The most celebrated are those of Bessing- 
heim. They are of a light red colour, not deep, 
and of tolerable flavour and bouquet. 

Wiesbaden grows some good wines at Schier- 
stein, and Epstein, near Frankfort. The best 
wines of Baden are produced in the seigniory of 
Badenweiler, near Fribourg. At Heidelberg, the 
great tun used to be filled with the wine of that 
neighbourhood, boasted to be a hundred and 
twenty years old, but it gave the wine no advan- 
tage over other Neckar growths. Some good 
wines are produced near Baden. The red wines 
of Wangen are much esteemed in the country of 
Bavaria, but they are very ordinary. Wiirzburg 
grows the Stein and Liesten wines. The first is 
produced upon a mountain so called, and is called 
11 wine of the Holy Spirit " by the Hospital of 
Wiirzburg, to which it belongs. The Liesten 
wines are produced upon Mount St. Nicholas. 
Straw wines are made in Franconia. A vin de 
liqueur, called Calmus, like the sweet wines of 
Hungary, is made in the territory of Frankfort, 
at AschafFenburg. The best vineyards are those 
of Bischofsheim. Some wines are made in Sax- 
ony, but they are of little worth. Meissen, near 



332 



The Automobilist Abroad 



Dresden, and Guben, produce the best. Naum- 
berg makes some small wines, like the inferior 
Burgundies. 

With these pages as a general guide the tour- 
ing automobilist must make his own itinerary. 
He will not always want to put up for the night 
in a large town, and will often prefer the quiet- 
ness and the romantic picturesqueness of some 
little half-mountain-hidden townlet and its simple 
fare to a table d'hote meal, such as he gets at 
Cologne or Coblenz, which is simply a poor imi- 
tation of its Parisian namesake. 

The following skeleton gives the leading points. 



Cologne 

Bonn 

Godesberg 

Andernach 

Coblenz 

St. Goar 

Bingen 

Mayence 

Frankfort 

Worms 

Mannheim 

Heidelberg 

Spire 

Carlsruhe 

Baden 



to Bonn 
to Godesberg 
to Andernach 
to Coblenz 
to St. Goar 
to Bingen 
to Mayence 
to Frankfort 
to Worms 
to Mannheim 
to Heidelberg 
to Spire 
to Carlsruhe 
to Baden 
to Strasburg 



(Hotel Rheinfeck) 
(Hotel Blinzer) 
(Hotel Schafer) 
(Hotel Metropole) 
(Hotel Rheinfels) 
(Stakenburger Hof) 
(Pfalzer Hof) 
(Savoy Hotel) 
(Europaischer Hof) 
(Pfalzer Hof) 
(Hotel Schrieder) 
(Pfalzer Hof) 
(Hotel Erbprinz) 
(Hotel Stephanie) 
(H6tel de l'Europe) 



27 Kilometres 
7 

28 « 
18 " 
46 « 

29 « 

27 « 
33 " 
52 « 
41 « 
22 " 

28 « 
52 " 
26 « 
60 « 



Generally speaking, none of the hotels above 
mentioned include wine with meals. The trail 
of the tourist accounts for this. All have accom- 
modation for the automobilist. 

From Strasburg one may continue to Basel, 



On the Road by the Rhine 333 

if he is bound Italyward through Switzerland, 
but the chief distinctive features of the Rhine 
tour end at Strasburg. 

From Strasburg one may enter France by St. 
Die, in the Vosges, via the Col de Saales, the 
douane (custom-house) station for which is at 
Nouveau Saales. 

The following are some of the signs and ab- 
breviations met with in German hotels catering 
for stranger automobilists. 

Ohne Weill Wine not included 

A. C. B. Automobile Club de Belgique 

M. C. B. Moto-Club de Belgique 

T. C. B. Touring Club de Belgique 

T. C N. Touring Club N6erlandais 

A. C. F. Automobile Club de Franca 

T. C. F. Touring Club de France 

Bade-Raum Bathroom 

Grube Fosse or Inspection Pit 



THE END. 



Appendices 



335 



Appendices 



WARNING ROAD SIGNS IN FRANCE 



UH Vlrage a droits. 


LBJ Passage en dessous. 


HhJ Virago a gauche. 


|S££J Passago a niveau. 


Lh3 Virage avec moiitee. 


WLM Pails en saillio sur route. 


Bm Virage avoc debcente. 
Mjn 


U Cauiveau. 

MR 


mM Crolsement dangoreux. 


■QtJ Mauvalo pav*. 


mJm Monwe. 


MM Dos d'ane. 

MM 


■fc] DCSCCDtO. 


P H Villago. 


Cj Desconte slnueuse avoc 
th9 mauvaia viragos. 





WARNING ROAD SIGNS IN ENGLAND 




1. Restricted speed limit. 

2. Road forbidden to automobiles. 

3. Danger spots. 

4. All other notices or warnings. 

337 



II 

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF SOME FAMOUS 
EUROPEAN ROAD RACES AND TRIALS 

In December, 1893, Le Petit Journal of Paris 
proposed a trial of self-propelled road-vehicles, 
to end with a run from Paris to Rouen. The dis- 
tance was 133 kilometres and the first car to ar- 
rive at Rouen was a steam-tractor built by De 
Dion, Bouton et Cie, to-day perhaps the largest 
manufacturers of the ordinary gasoline-motor. 
A Peugot carriage, fitted with a Daimler engine, 
followed next, and then a Panhard. There were 
something like a hundred entries for this trial, 
of which one was from England and three from 
Germany, but most of them did not survive the 
run. 

On the 11th of June, 1895, was started the 
now historic Paris-Bordeaux race. Sixteen gaso- 
line and half a dozen steam cars started from the 
Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, for the journey to 
Bordeaux and back. It was a Panhard-Levassor 
that arrived back in Paris first, but the prize was 
given to a Peugot which carried four passengers, 
whereas the Panhard carried but two. 

In the following year the new locomotion was 
evidently believed to have come to stay, for the 
first journal devoted to the industry and sport 



Appendices 339 

was founded in Paris, under the name of La 
Locomotion Automobile, soon to be followed by 
another called La France Automobile. 

In 1896 was held the Paris-Marseilles race, 
divided into five stages for the outward journey, 
and five stages for the homeward. Twenty-four 
gasoline-cars started, and three propelled by 
steam, and there were five gasoline-tricycles. 
BoleVs tandem tricycle was the sensation during 
the first stage, averaging twenty miles an hour. 
The itinerary out and back, of something like six- 
teen hundred kilometres, was covered first by a 
Panhard-Levassor, in sixty-seven hours, forty- 
two minutes, and fifty-eight seconds. The average 
speed of the winner was something like twenty- 
two kilometres an hour. 

In England a motor-car run was organized 
from London to Brighton in 1896, including many 
of the vehicles which had started in the Paris- 
Marseilles race in France. The first vehicles to 
arrive in Brighton were the two Bolee tricycles; 
a Duryea was third, and a Panhard fourth. 

In 1897 there was a race in France, on a course 
laid out between Marseilles, Nice, and La Turbie. 
The struggle was principally between the Comte 
Chasseloup-Laubat in a steam-car, and M. Le- 
maitre in a Panhard. with a victory for the 
former, showing at least that there were pos- 
sibilities in the steam-car which gasoline had not 
entirely surpassed. 

Pneumatic tires were used in the Paris-Bor- 
deaux race in 1895, but solid tires were used on 
the winning cars in 1894, 1895, and 1896. 



340 Appendices 

Another affair which came off in 1897 was a 
race from Paris to Dieppe, organized by two 
Paris newspapers, the Figaro and Les Sports. 
The event was won by a three-wheeled Bolee, 
with a De Dion second, and a six-horse-power 
Panhard third. 

In 1898 there took place the Paris-Amsterdam 
race. It was won by a Panhard, driven by Char- 
ron, and the distance was approximately a thou- 
sand miles, something like sixteen hundred kilo- 
metres. 

The " Tour de France " was organized by the 
Matin in 1898. The distance was practically two 
thousand kilometres. Panhards won the first, 
second, third, and fourth places, though they were 
severely pressed by Mors. 

The first Gordon-Bennett cup race was held in 
1900, between Paris and Lyons. The distance 
was not great, but the trial was in a measure 
under general road conditions, though it took on 
all the aspects of a race. It was won by Charron 
in a Panhard. 

In 1901 the Gordon-Bennett race was run from 
Paris to Bordeaux, perhaps the most ideal course 
in all the world for such an event. It was won 
by Girardot in a forty-horse Panhard. 

The Paris-Berlin race came in the same year, 
with Fournier as winner, in a Mors designed by 
Brazier. 

In 1902 the Gordon-Bennett formed a part of 
the Paris-Vienna itinerary, the finish being at 
Innsbruck in the Tyrol. De Knyff in a Panhard 
had victory well within his grasp when, by a mis- 




The Evolution of the Racing A utomdbile 



Appendices 341 

fortune in the parting of his transmission gear, 
he was beaten by Edge in the English Napier. 
Luck had something to do with it, of course, but 
Edge was a capable and experienced driver and 
made the most of each and every opportunity. 

Through to Vienna the race was won by Far- 
man in a seventy-horse-power Panhard, though 
Marcel Renault in a Renault " Voiture Leg ere " 
was first to arrive. 

It was in 1901 that the famous Mercedes first 
met with road victories. A thirty-five-horse 
power Mercedes won the Nice-Salon-Nice event 
in the south of France, and again in the following 
year the Nice-La Turbie event. 

In the Circuit des Ardennes event in 1902, Jar- 
rot, in a seventy-horse Panhard, and Gabriel in 
a Mors, were practically tied until the last round, 
when Jarrot finally won, having made the entire 
distance (approximately 450 kilometres) at an 
average speed of fifty-four and a half miles per 
hour. There were no controles. 

In 1903 the Gordon-Bennett cup race was held 
in Ireland, over a course of 368 miles, twice 
around a figure-eight track. Germany won with 
a Mercedes with Jenatzy at the wheel, with De 
KnyfT in a Panhard only ten minutes behind. 

In 1903 was undertaken the disastrous Paris- 
Madrid road race. Between Versailles and Bor- 
deaux the accidents were so numerous and ter- 
rible, due principally to reckless driving, that the 
affair was abandoned at Bordeaux. Gabriel in 
a Mors car made the astonishing average of 



342 Appendices 

sixty-two and a half miles per hour, hence may 
be considered the winner as far as Bordeaux. 

In 1904 the Gordon-Bennett race was run over 
the Taunus course in Germany, with Thery the 
winner in a Richard-Brazier car. 

In 1905 Thery again won on the Circuit d'Au- 
vergne in the same make of car, making a sen- 
sational victory which — to the French at least 
— has apparently assured the automobile su- 
premacy to France for all time. 

The 1906 event was the Grand Prix of the 
Automobile Club de France on the Circuit de la 
Sarthe. The astonishing victories of the Renault 
car driven by Szisz, which made the round of 680 
kilometres in two days at the average rate of 
speed of 108 kilometres an hour, has elated all 
connected with the French automobile industry. 
It was a victory for removable rims also, as had 
Szisz not been able to replace his tattered tires 
almost instanteously with others already blown 
up, he would certainly have been overtaken by 
one or more of the Brazier cars, which suffered 
greatly from tire troubles. 

In 1906 another event was organized in France 
by the Matin. It was hardly in the nature of a 
race, but a trial of over six thousand kilometres, 
an extended tour de France. 

Forty-two automobiles of all ranks left the 
Place de la Concorde at Paris on the 2d of 
August, and thirty-three arrived at Paris on the 
28th of the same month, twenty of them without 
penalization of any sort. No such reliability 
trial was ever held previously, and it showed that 



Appendices 



343 




Diagram of the Coupe de Matin 



344 



Appendices 



the worth of the comparatively tiny eight and 
ten horse machines for the work was quite as 
great as that of the forty and sixty horse 
monsters. 

The following tables show plainly the value of 
this great trial. 



COUPE DU MATIN 
LIST OF AUTOMOBILES ENGAGED 

CLASS '< ROUES " (SPUING WHEELS AND ANTI - SKIDS) 



1. 


Antiderapant 


N6ron 


de Deitrich 


2. 


ii 


Vulcain I. 


de Dion-Bouton 


3. 


u 


Vulcain II. 


Corre 


33. 


Roues ^lastiquea 


Soleil 


Rochet-Schneider 


38. 


ii « 


Garchey I. 


de Dion-Bouton 


39. 


u <i 


Garchey II. 


Mieusset 


42. 


<i ii 


E. L. 


Delauney-Belleville 



CLASS ENDURANCE 



1st Category 
Motocyclettes, vitesse maxima, 25 kilometres a l'heure 
35. Motocyclette Lurquin-Coudert 

« Albatross (Motor Buchet) 



64. 
67. 



Rene Gillet 



2d Category 

Tri-cars, vitesse maxima, 25 kilometres a l'heure 
4. Mototri Contal I. 5. Mototri Contal II. 



Sd Category 
Voiturette 1 cylindre, al6sage maximum 110 millimetres 



6. Fouillaron 34. 

8. De Dion-Bouton et Cie I. 47. 

9. Darracq et Cie 



Voiturette Darracq II. 
Voiturette Lacoste & 
Battmann I. 



Appendices 



345 



12. 

18. 
25. 
30. 



De Dion-Bouton et Cie II. 48. 
Cottereau I. 

Voiturette Roy 49. 

Voiturette G. R. A. R. 



Voiturette Lacoste & 

Battmann II. 
Voiturette Lacoste & 

Battmann III. 



59. Voiturette Alcyon 



jfrth Category 

Voitures 2 cylindres, atesage maximum 130 millimetres, ou 

4 cylindres, alesage maximum 85 millimetres 



10. 


Darracq II. 21. 


Cottereau IV. 


11. 


Darracq 22. 


Kallista I. 


13. 


De Dion-Bouton et Cie III. 23. 


Kallista II. 


15. 


D. Thuault 44. 


Panhard et Levassor 


19. 


Cottereau 11. 46. 


Corre 


20. 


Cottereau III. 51. 
5 th Category 


X. 




Voitures 4 cylindres, al6sage maximum 105 millimetres 


7. 


C. V. R. I. 43. Darracq V. 


16. 


De Dion-Bouton et Cie IV. 50. Herald 


17. 


De Dion-Bouton et Cie V. 57. Panhard 


28. 


Renault Freres 60. De Dion-Bouton et Cie VI. 


29. 


C. I. A. 61. Bayard Clement I. 


31. 


C. V. R. II. 65. Corre 




66. Berliet 





6th Category 
Voitures 4 cylindres, alesage maximum 126 millimetres 
14. Mercedes I. 52. Mors. 

Scrive 53. 

Pilain I. 55. 

Pilain II. 58. 

C. V. R. III. 62. 

Gobron 63. 



24. 
26. 
27. 
32. 
45. 



Mercedes II. 
Clement 
Darracq IV. 
Bayard-Clement II. 
C. V. R. IV. 



68. Mercedes III. 



7th Category 

Voitures 4 cylindres, alesage maximum 140 millimetres 

36. Siddely 37. Siddely 

56. Fiat 



ni 




Boute Maps of Three Great European Events 



346 



IV 




C omparative Chart, Increase in the Average Speeds Per Hour in the 
Great Automobile Events of the Last Five Years 



847 



V 

SOME FAMOUS HILL CLIMBS ABEOAD 

ENGLAND 

Birdlip Hill Near Gloucester. Length, 2 miles ; average 

gradient, 1 in 8 ; steepest gradient, 1 in 7. 

Dashwood Hill. — Near High Wycombe. Length, 1,180 yards ; 
average gradient, 1 in 16 ; steepest gradient, 1 in 10.9. 

Hindhead. — Near Guildford. Length, 2 3-4 miles; rise, 520 
feet ; average gradient, 1 in 24.4 ; steepest gradient, 1 in 13. 

Porlock Hill. — North Devon. Length, 3 miles ; rise, 1,365 
feet ; gradient, 1 in 6 to 1 in 8. 

Shap Fell. — Near Penrith. Rise, 1,386 feet ; gradients, 1 in 11, 
1 in 15, 1 in 16, and 1 in 20. 

Snmvdon. — Mountain in Wales. Steepest gradient, 1 in 7. 

Westerham. — Length, 2,940 feet ; average gradient, 1 in 9.4. 

FRANCE 

Chateau Thierry. — Near Meaux. Length, 1,093 yards 

Cote de Gaillon. — Near Rouen. The scene of the most famous 
hill climbs in France. Length, 3 kilometres ; rise, 10 per cent, for 
the greater part of the distance. 

Cote de Laffray. — Near Grenoble. Length, 4.13 miles ; gradi- 
ents, 1 in 15, 1 in 11, 1 in 10, and 1 in 8 ; average, 9.3 per cent ; 
many bad turns. 

La Turbie. — A rude foot-hill climb in the Maritime Alps just 
back of Monte Carlo. 

Mont Ventoux. — Near Avignon. Length, 20 kilometres ; rise 
1,600 metres. 

Mont Cenis. — Near Turin. The " climb " begins at Susa, on 
the Italian side of the mountain, at the 596 metre level, and con- 
tinues for 22 kilometres to the 2,087 metre level, a 100 - b . p. Fiat 
climbed this in 1905 in 19 minutes, 18 3-5 seconds. 

848 






VI 



*r 



.* t 



i* 



. s 



- JL 



3 



*>' .3 



i* I' 






<< 
P 



«M 



1! 



n 



> 



* 



i = 



1 1 



< 



- u. 



E 



al» 



oq 



349 



VII 

THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IN FRANCE 



Year. 


Number 
of Cars 
Built. 


Value 
Fca. 


Value 
Exported 
Fes. 


1898 


1,850 


8,300,000 


1,749,350 


1899 


2,200 


11,000,000 


4,259,330 


1900 


4,100 


23,000,000 


6,617,360 


1901 


6,300 


39,000,000 


15,782,290 


1902 


7,800 


47,000,000 


30,219,380 


1903 


11,500 


81,000,000 


50,837,140 


1904 


13,400 


106,000,000 


71,035,000 


1905 


20,500 


140,000,000 


100,265,000 



VIII 
HOURS OF MOONLIGHT 



Moon 5 days old shines till 

(I g U U M (( 

u 1 u U (( « 

Moon 15 days old rises at 

ii \Q tl «< a (i 

« ]7 <i (( n a 

4< jy it « << « 



11 p. m. (approx.) 

12 p. m. " 
1am " 

6 p. m. (approx.) 

7 p.m. " 

8 P.M. « 

910 p.m. « 



850 



IX 
THE LENGTH OF DAYS 



* 3 M 5> 6 ; 6 9 IO II i! I I J k S 6 ; 69 10 II IB 




After the method of M. Carlier, Ingenieur des Arts et Manu- 
factures. 

Figured for the latitude of Paris, but applicable so far as the 
automobilist is concerned to most of continental Europe. 

The deeply shaded portions represent night. 

The lightly shaded portions twilight. 

The white portions daylight. 

Generally speaking, lamps must be lighted at the hour indi- 
cated by deeply shaded portions in the respective months. 

361 



X 

THE TOURING CLUB DE FRANCE 

The Touring Club de France is the largest and 
most active national association for the promo- 
tion of touring. It is under the direct patronage 
of the President of the French Republic, and the 
interests and wants of its members are protected 
and provided for in a full and practical manner 
by an excellent organization, whose influence is 
felt in every part of France and the adjacent 
countries. 

The membership is over 100,000 and is steadily 
growing. It includes a very considerable body of 
foreign members, those from the United King- 
dom and America alone numbering 5,000, a cir- 
cumstance which may be accepted, perhaps, as the 
best possible proofs of the value of the advan- 
tages which the club offers to tourists from 
abroad visiting France. 

The annual subscription is 6 francs (5s.) for 
foreign members. There is no entrance fee and 
the election of candidates generally follows 
within a few days after the receipt of the applica- 
tion at the offices of the club in Paris. 

The club issues a number of publications spe- 
cially compiled for cyclists, comprising: a Year- 
book (Annuaire) for France divided in two parts 
(North and South) with a list of over three thou- 

852 



Appendices 353 

sand selected club hotels, at which members en- 
joy a privileged position as to charges; an ad- 
mirable volume of skeleton tours covering the 
whole of France, from each large centre, and by 



DEMANDE D'ADMISSION 



Q. 

ft 

Jo demando mon admission an TQURWQ^diVB DE S| 

FRANCE «.^ . 

Cl-joiat 6 francs, montant de la cotisation do Vannie 8 g.2 

couranto (Lo raohal do la cotisation est admis.moyennanl «J5 J 

to yer.tement d'uoo sotnme de CENT francs ;-il contere la, *"-£« 

qualite de MEMBRE A VIE M g' 

L;i cotisation des candidats habitant les Colonies ou l'Elranger •» 5 » 

eat do six francs (Voir slaluts, art. 3) <o ■- H 

SIGNATURE S 8 "2 

6 3a 

s* s 

ill 

(soit l'acluellc, suit l'ancienne) -2 

Nationalite _ — _ « - 5 

to 3-2 
Decorations et distinctions honoriBques _ ■ « s 3 

Rue et numero , , ...... iZJ* 

Sfii 
Villa I _ ^Sg 



!Rue et namen 
Deparloment ( 



|=1 

yoms et adresso ( ,. , _.- __^. ^ g^ 

des Parrains < fZ"* 

eu References ( ■ , , -■-. -..., ^. <j ■ ■. 

Adresser les mandats ou bons de poste au nom de M la < £ ** 

Comte de Reinach-FoussemaOhe, tresorier du T. C. F., 65, avenue j jj 
de la Graiide-Armce, Paris. 



II 



Facsimile of Application Form 

regions, and supplemented by some three hundred 
card itineraries with sketch maps; a specially 
drawn cyclist's map of France, and a monthly 
club gazette, all designed to facilitate the plan- 
ning and carrying out of interesting tours with 
comfort and economy. 



354 Appendices 

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES 

Fill in the application form and enclose it with 
the subscription (6 francs) to M. le President du 
T. C. F., 65, Avenue de la Grande-Armee, Paris. 
The applications of lady candidates should be 
signed by a male relative — brother, father, hus- 
band — whether a member of the club or not. 

Notice of resignation of membership must 
reach the Paris office of the club not later than 
November 30th, failing which the member is liable 
for the following y.ear's subscription. Those who 
join after October 1st are entitled to the priv- 
ileges of membership until the close of the follow- 
ing year for one subscription. 

Post-office money orders should be made pay- 
able to M. le Tresorier du T. C. F., 65, Avenue 
de la Grande-Armee, Paris, France. 

The addresses of the representatives of the 
Touring Club de France in England and America 
are as follows; further information concerning 
this admirable institution for all travellers 
whether by train, bicycle, or automobile will be 
gladly furnished. They can also supply forms 
for application for membership. 





DELEGATES 


New York City 


Ch. Dien 


38 - 40 West 33d St. 


Boston 


F. Hesseltine 


10 Tremont St. 


Washington 


H. Lazard 


1453 Massachusetts Ave, 


London 


C F. Just 


17 Victoria St. S. W. 


Edinburgh 


Dr. D. Turner 


37 George Square. 


Dublin 


G. Fotterell 


46 Fleet St. 



XI 

MOTOR-CAR REGULATIONS AND 
CUSTOMS DUTIES IN EUROPE 

GREAT BRITAIN 

Certain regulations are compulsory even for 
tourists. You may obtain a license to drive a 
motor-car in Britain if you are over seventeen 
years of age (renewable every twelve months) 
at a cost of five shillings. 

You must register your motor-car at the 
County or Borough Council offices where you 
reside, fee £1.0.0. You must pay a yearly " male 
servant " tax of fifteen shillings for your chauf- 
feur. In case of accident, en route, you must 
stop and, if required, give your name and ad- 
dress, also name and address of the owner of the 
car and the car number. 

Every car must bear two number plates (the 
number is assigned you on registration), one 
front and one rear. The latter must be lighted 
at night. 

Speed limit is twenty miles an hour except 
where notice is posted to the effect that ten miles 
an hour only is allowed, or that some particular 
road is forbidden to automobiles. 

In England one's car can be registered at any 

366 



356 Appendices 

port on arrival, or, by letter addressed to any 
licensing authority, before arrival. The regula- 
tion as to driving licenses is as follows: 

" If any person applies to the Council of a 
county or county borough for the grant of a 
license and the Council are satisfied that he has 
no residence in the United Kingdom, the Coun- 
cil shall, if the applicant is otherwise entitled, 
grant him a license, notwithstanding that he is 
not resident within their county or county 
borough. ' ' 

As regards the Inland Eevenue Carriage 
License, however, it may be noted that twenty- 
one days ' grace is allowed — in other words, that 
licenses must be obtained within twenty-one days 
after first becoming liable to the duty. 

There are no customs duties on automobiles 
entering Great Britain. 

FRANCE 

CERTIFICAT DE CAPACITE AND RECEPISSE DE 
DECLARATION 

Before taking an automobile upon the road in 
France all drivers must procure the Certificat de 
C apatite, commonly known as the " Carte 
Rouge." 

The following letter should be addressed to 
the nearest prefecture, or sous-prefecture, writ- 
ten on stamped paper {papier timbre, 60 cen- 
times) and accompanied by two miniature photo- 
graphs. 



Appendices 



357 



" Monsieur : — J'ai l'honneur de vous demander de me faire 
convoquer pour subir l'examen necessaire a l'obtention d'un cer- 
tificat de capacity pour la conduite d'une voiture . . . (indiquer 
la marque) mue par un moteur a petrole. 

" Veuillez agreer, etc." 



MINISTERS 

des 
TRAVAUX PUBLICS 



REPUBUQUE FRANCA1SE 

pfPAKTUUMT 



Cadre destineV 

a la 
photographie 
da ti tula ire. 



CIRCULATION DES AUTOMOBILES 

(Decret du 10 mars 1899.) 



CERTIFICAT DE CAPACITY 

valable -pour la conduite 

d(i) 

(1) Designer la nature da oa des vehi- 
cules auxquels s'applique le certificate 



Hameto 4b e<rtiflcat. Le Prefet da department d 

(l) Vu le decret da 10 mars l8Q9portant rigle- 

ment relatif a la circulation des automobiles, 

et spccialement son article 11 ; 
Vu l'avis favorable da serric* des mines, 
D^livre a M. (a) 

nfi (3) 

domicilii a (4) 

un certificat de capacity pour la conduits 
fl»ulur«dtttilaliir«d(j) 

fonctionnant dans lea conditions piescrites 

par lc decret susvise. 

,le ■ 

Le Prefer, 

(I) Numero du regislre special de la prefecture. — (J) Norn el prenomi. 
— (3) Lieu el data dc oaissauce. — (4) Indication precise du domicile. — 
(.*>) Designation de la nature du ou des vehicules a la conduite desqueli 
i'applique le certificat cooiormement au paragraphs 11 de la circulate mioia- 
terlaJIe du 10 avhl 1899. 






Facsimile of "Certificat de C apatite" 

Bien indiquer le nom, le prenom et l'adresse. 
Cette lettre doit etre accompagnee de: 
1. Un certificat de domicile delivre a Paris par 
le commissaire de police du quartier; pour les 
departernents, par le maire de la commune; 



358 



Appendices 



2. Une piece justificative d'identite dormant 
l'etat civil, un bulletin de naissance, par exemple; 

3. Deux photographies non collees. 
Quelque temps apres, le chauffeur est convoque 



REPUBLIQUE FRANQAISE 

DiPARTBMBMT 



MIMISTSkl 

dec 

TRAVAUX PUBLICS 



d 



Circulation des Automobiles 

(Dlcret du io mars 1899.) 



R6CEPISSE" DE DECLARATION 



Le Pr£fet'du departement d 

Vu. le d£cret da to mars 1899, portant rigle- 
ment relatif a la circulation des automobiles, 
et sp£cialement les articles 8, 9 et 10 de ce 
dlcret, 

Certifie avoir recu une declaration CO date 
da 
)Ron.ttprfiont. par laquelle M. (1) 
)Indintinpr(eiie domicilii a (3) 

4l ioiittit. declare €tre proprietaire du vlhicul* a mottur 

mlcanique dlfini comme il suit t 

Nom du constructeur : 

Indication du type : 

Numero d'ordre dans la sine du t jpe : 

Ladite declaration a Hi enregistrec 1 la 
prefecture sous le a* 



,U I 

U Prifti, 



Facsimile of u Re'cepisse de Declaration'' '' 

pour passer son examen, sur une voiture du mo- 
dele mentionne dans sa lettre. 

Un certificat provisoire lui est remis; le certi- 
ficat defmitif est fourni quelques jours plus tard 
par la prefecture. 



Appendices 359 

At the same time another letter should be ad- 
dressed to the same authority requesting a Rc- 
cepisse de Declaration. These applications must 
be quite separate and distinct; each on its own 
papier timbre, which you buy at any bureau de 
tabac. 

" Monsieur le Pre>et : — Je soussigne' . . . (nom, pr6- 
nom, domicile) . . . propriStaire d'une voiture automobile 
actionize par un moteur a p^trole systeme (type et numero du 
type), ai 1'honneur de vous demander un permis de circulation. 

" Vous trouverez sous ce pli le proces-verbal de reception d£- 
livr6 par le constructeur. 

" Veuillez agr£er, etc." 

Le permis de circulation est remis soit imme- 
diatement, soit quelques jours apres, suivant 
l'affluence des demandes. 

NAMES OF ARRONDISSEMENTS AND DISTINGUISHING 
LETTERS BORNE BY AUTOMOBILES IN FRANCE 

Alais, A 

Arras, R 

Bordeaux, B 

Chalon-sur-Sa6ne, C 

Chambe>y, H 

Clermont-Ferrand, F 

Douai, D 

Le Mans, L 

Marseille, M 

Nancy, N 

Poitiers, P 

Rouen, Y on Z 

Saint-Etienne, S 

Toulouse, T 

Paris, E, G, I, U, X 



360 Appendices 

CUSTOMS DUTIES IN FRANCE 

Fifty francs per 100 kilos on all motor vehicles 
weighing more than 125 kilos. Automobiles (in- 
cluding motor-cycles) weighing less than 125 
kilos pay a flat rate of 120 francs. 

Members of most cycling touring clubs can ar- 
range for the entry of motor-cycles free of duty. 

All customs duties paid in France may be re- 
imbursed upon the exportation of the automo- 
bile. The formalities are very simple. Inquire 
at bureau of entry. 

BELGIUM 

Customs Dues. — 12y 2 per cent, ad valorem 
(owners' declaration as to value), but the authori- 
ties reserve the right to purchase at owners' val- 
uation if they think it undervalued. This is sup- 
posed to prevent fraud, and no doubt it does. 

A driving certificate is not required of tourists, 
but a registered number must be carried. Plates 
and a permit are supplied at the frontier station 
by which one enters, or they may be obtained at 
Brussels from the chef de police. 

Speed limit: 30 kilometres per hour in the 
open country and 10 kilometres per hour in the 
towns, except, generally speaking, the larger cities 
hold down the speed to that of a trotting horse. 



Customs Dues are five per cent, ad valorem, 
it in practice nothing is demanded of genuine 



Appendices 3GI 

tourists and a permit is now given (1906) for 
eight days with a right of extension for a similar 
period. 

Foreign number plates, once recorded by the 
Dutch customs officials, will supplant the need of 
local number plates. 

SWITZERLAND 

Customs Dues are 60 francs per 100 kilos. 
This amount, deposited on entering the country, 
will be refunded upon leaving and complying 
with the formalities. 

Legally a driving and "circulation" permit 
may be demanded, but often this is waived. 

In the Canton Valais only the main road from 
St. Maurice to Brigue is open for automobile 
traffic. Many other roads are entirely closed. 

N.B. Traffic regulations in many parts are 
exceedingly onerous and often unfair to for- 
eigners. 

A recent conference of the different cantons 
has been held at Berne to consider the question 
of automobile traffic in the country. It was de- 
cided to fix a blue sign on the roads where motor- 
ists must slacken speed, and a yellow sign where 
motoring is not allowed. The Department of the 
Interior was deputed to draw up a uniform code 
of rules for the guidance of police deputed to 
take charge of the roads. No decision was ar- 
rived at as regards uniformity in fines for in- 
fraction of the regulations, but steps are to be 
taken to put an end to the abuses to which it is 



362 Appendices 

alleged the police have subjected motorists. A 
resolution was furthermore adopted to the effect 
that no road is to be closed to motor-cars without 
an agreement between the authorities of all the 
cantons concerned, and that all foreign motorists 
shall be given a copy of the regulations on enter- 
ing the country. 

The above information is given here that no 
one may be unduly frightened, but there is no 
question but that Switzerland has not been so 
hospitable to automobile tourists as to other 
classes. 

The Simplon Pass, under certain restrictions, 
has recently been opened to automobiles. Open 
from June 1st to October 15th, except on 
Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but no de- 
parture can be made from either Brigue or 
Gondo after three p. m. Apply for pass at the 
Gendarmerie. Speed 10 kilometres on the open 
road, and 3 kilometres on curves and in tunnels. 

ITALY 

Customs Dues are according to weight. 



500 kilos 


200 fcs. 


500 - 1000 kilos 


400 fcs. 


above 1000 kilos 


600 fcs. 


motor cycles 


42 fcs. 



A certificate for importation temporaire is 
given by the customs officers on entering, and the 
same must be given up on leaving the country, 
when the sum deposited will be reimbursed. 



Appendices 363 

Since January 8, 1905, a driving certificate is 
compulsory, but the authorities will issue same 
readily to tourists against foreign certificates or 
licenses. 

Speed during the day must be limited to 40 
kilometres an hour in the open country and 12 
kilometres in the towns. 

At night the speed (legally) may not exceed 15 
kilometres an hour. Lamps white on the right, 
green on the left. There are special regulations 
far Florence. 

LUXEMBOURG 

Customs Dues. — One hundred and fifty marks 
per automobile. A piece d'identite will be given 
the applicant on entering, and upon giving this 
up on leaving the duties will be reimbursed. 

German, French, and Belgian coins all pass 
current (except bronze money). 

GERMANY 

Customs Dues. — Temporary importation by 
tourists 150 marks per auto. Oil and gasoline in 
the tanks also pay duty under certain rulings. A 
small matter, this, anyway. 

According to recent regulations tourists are 
permitted to introduce motor-vehicles into Ger- 
many for a temporary visit, free of customs duty. 
but it has been left to the discretion of the offi- 
cials to give motorists the benefit of this arrange- 
ment, or to charge the ordinary duty, with the 



364 Appendices 

result that some have had to make a deposit, and 
others have succeeded in passing their cars into 
the country free. 

Uniform driving or tax regulations are want- 
ing in Germany, but something definite is evi- 
dently forthcoming from the authorities shortly 
(1906-7), with the probability that even visitors 
will have to pay a revenue tax. 

Kule of the road is keep to the right and pass 
on the left, as in most Continental countries. 

Speed limits, during darkness, or in populous 
districts, vary from 9 to 15 kilometres per hour, 
but " driving to the common danger " is the only 
other cause which will prevent one making any 
speed he likes in the open country. 

Foreigners should apply to the police authori- 
ties immediately on having entered the country 
for information as to new rules and regulations. 

SPAIN 

Customs Dues vary greatly on automobiles. 
The motor pays 18 francs, 50 centimes per hun- 
dred kilos., and the carrosserie according to its 
form or design. Ordinary tonneau type four 
places, 1,000 pesetas. For temporary importa- 
tion receipts are given which will enable one to 
be reimbursed upon exportation of the vehicle. 
In general the road regulations of France apply 
to Spain. 

Speed limit, 28 kilometres per hour in open 
country down to 12 kilometres in the towns. 



Appendices 365 

A circulation permit and driving certificate 
should be obtained. 

M. J. Lafitte, 8 Place de la Liberte, Biarritz, 
can " put one through " (at an appropriate fee), 
in a manner hardly possible for one to accom- 
plish alone. 

A special " free-entry " permit is sometimes 
given for short periods. 



xn 

SOME NOTES ON MAP -MAKING 

The most fascinating maps for tried travellers 
are the wonderful Cartes d'Etat Major and of 
Ministre de PInterieur in France. The Ordnance 
Survey maps in England are somewhat of an 
approach thereto, but they are in no way as in- 
teresting to study. 

One must have a good eye for distances and 
the lay of the land, and a familiarity with the 
conventional signs of map-makers, in order to 
get full value from these excellent French maps, 
but the close contemplation of them will show 
many features which might well be incorporated 
into the ordinary maps of commerce. 

The great national roads are distinctly marked 
with little dots beside the road, representing the 
tree-bordered " Routes Nationales," but often 
there is a cut-off of equally good road between 
two points on one's itinerary which of course is 
not indicated in any special manner. For this 
reason alone these excellent maps are not wholly 
to be recommended to the automobilist who is 
covering new ground. For him it is much better 
that he should stick to the maps issued by the 
Touring Club de France or the cheaper, more 
legible, and even more useful Cartes Taride. 

366 



Appendices 



3(57 




368 Appendices 

In England, as an alternative to the Ordnance 
Survey maps, there are Bartholemew's coloured 
maps, two miles to the inch, and the Half Inch 
Map of England and Wales. 

Belgium is well covered by the excellent 
" Carte de Belgique " of the Automobile Club 
de Belgique, Italy by the maps of the Italian 
Touring Club, and Germany by the ingenious 
profile map known as " Strassenprofilkarten," 
rather difficult to read by the uninitiated. 

One of the great works of the omnific Touring 
Club de France is the preparation of what might 
be called pictorial inventories of the historical 
monuments and natural curiosities of France 
made on the large-scale maps of the Etat Major. 
Primarily these are intended to be filed away in 
their wonderful " Bibliotheque, ' ' that all and 
sundry who come may read, but it is also further 
planned that they shall be displayed locally in 
hotels, automobile clubs, and the like. The mode 
of procedure is astonishingly simple. These de- 
tailed maps of the War Department are simply 
cut into strips and mounted consecutively, and 
the " sights " marked on the margin (with ap- 
propriate notes) after the manner of the example 
here given. 

There seems no reason why one could not make 
up his own maps beforehand in a similar fashion, 
of any particular region or itinerary that he 
proposed to " do " thoroughly. One misses a 
great deal en route that is not marked clearly 
on the map before his eyes. 



XIII 

A LIST OF EUROPEAN MAP AND ROAD 
BOOKS 

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 

The Contour Road Books 

Vol. I. North England, including part of Wales. 
" II. West England " « " " 

" III. Southeastern England. 

Very useful books, including about five hundred maps and 
plans, showing gradients and road profiles. 

Bartholomew's Revised Map of England and Wales. — Complete 
in 37 sheets, 2 miles to the inch. 

Half Inch Map of England, Wales, and Scotland. — Published by- 
Gall and Inglis (Edinburgh). Complete in 47 sheets (England 
and Wales). 

" Strip " Maps. — Published by Gall and Inglis (Edinburgh) ; 2 
miles to the inch. 

1. Edinburgh to Inverness. 

2. Inverness to John o' Groat's. 

3. " Brighton Road," London to Brighton ; " Portsmouth 

Road," London to Portsmouth. 

4. « Southampton Road," London to Bournemouth. 

5. "Exeter Road," London to Exeter. 

6. « Bath Road," London to Bristol. 

10. " Great North Road," in two parts : London to York, Leeds, 
or Harrogate ; York to Edinburgh. 

15. " Land's End Road," Bristol to Land's End. 

16. " Worcester Road," Bristol to Birmingham, Worcester to 

Lancashire. 

18. The North Wales Road : Liverpool, Manchester, and Bir- 

mingham to Holyhead. 

19. London to Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool. 

369 



370 Appendices 

20. " Great North Road," Edinburgh to York. 

21. •« Carlisle Road," Edinburgh to Lancashire. 
23. " Highland Road," Edinburgh to Inverness. 

28. "Johno' Groat's Road," Inverness to Caithness. 
Excellent for tours over a straightaway itinerary. 
The Cyclist's Touring Club Road Books 
Vol. I. deals with the Southern and Southwestern Counties 

south of the main road from London to Bath and Bristol. 
Vol. II. embraces the Eastern and Midland Counties, including 

the whole of Wales. 
Vol. III. covers the remainder of England to the Scottish Border. 
Vol. IV. includes the whole of Scotland. 
Vol. V., Southern Ireland, deals with the country south of the 

main road from Dublin to Galway. 
Vol. VI., Northern Ireland, deals with the country north of the 
main road from Dublin to Galway. 
Ordance Survey Map of England and Wales. — New series, 
complete in 354 sheets, 21 x 16 inches. One mile to the inch. 

Bartholemew 's Map of Scotland. — Complete in 29 sheets, 2 
miles to the inch. 

IRELAND 

Mecredys Road Maps 

1. Dublin and Wicklow. 

2. Kerry. 

3. Donegal. 

4. Connemara. 

5. Down. 

6. East Central Ireland. 

Mecredy's Road Book 
2 Volumes 
Vol. I. South of Dublin and Galway. 
Vol. II. North of Dublin and Galway. 

The Continental Road Book for Great Britain. — Published by 
the Continental Gutta-Percha Co. 

Excellent information on British roads, distances, hotels, etc., 
with a general map. 

The Automobile Hand Book. — The official year book of the 
Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland. 



Appendices 371 

Contains all the " official " information concerning automobil- 
ism in Britain. Rules and regulations, statistics, a few routes 
and plans of the large towns, and a list of " official " hotels, re- 
pairers, etc. 

Continental Maps and Road Books 

FRANCE 

Cartes Taride. — Excellent road maps of all France in 25 
sheets can be had everywhere mounted on paper at 1 franc, 
cloth 2 fcs. 50 centimes. All good roads marked in red ; danger- 
ous hills are marked, also railways. Kilometres are also given 
between towns en route. The most useful and readable maps 
published of any country. A. Taride, 20 Boulevard St. Denis, 
Paris, also publishes The Rhine, North and South Italy, and 
Switzerland, each at the same price. 

Guide Taride (Les Routes de France). — 4,000 itineraries 
throughout France and 150 itineraries from Paris to foreign 
cities and towns. Contains notes as to nature of roads, kilo- 
metric distances, etc. 

L'Annuaire de Route. — The year book of the Automobile 
Club de France contains hotel, garage, and mecanicien list f 
charging-stations for electric apparatus and vendors of gasoline. 

C. T. C. Road Book of France (in English). — Two volumes of 
road itineraries and notes. 

Cartes de VEtat Major. — Published by the Service Ge'ogra- 
phique de V A rme'e and sold or furnished by all booksellers. Can 
best be procured through the Touring Club de France, 65 Ave. 
de la Grande Armee, Paris. Scale 1-80,000, 30 centimes per sheet. 
Another scale 1-50,000. 

Carte de la Ministre d'ltite'rieur. — Scale 1400,000 and 1-80,000. 
Printed in three colours. 

Carte de France au 200,000 cq. — Published by the Service Ge'o- 
graphique and reproduced from the 1-80,000 carte by photolithog- 
raphy. Useful, but not so clear as the original. 

Cartes du Touring Club de France. — Scale 1-400,000. Indica- 
ting all routes with remarks as to their surfaces, hills, culverts, 
railway crossings, etc. Printed in five colours. 15 sheets, 63 x 90 
cm. 



372 Appendices 

These cartes lap over somewhat into Germany, Belgium, Italy, 
and Spain, and are very good. 

Le Guide-Michelin. — Issued by Michelin et Cie., the tire manu- 
facturers. The most handy and useful hotel and mecanicien list, 
•with kilometric distances between French towns and cities. 
Many miniature plans of towns and large map of France. 

Guide-Routiere Continental Issued by the manufacturers of 

Continental tires. Gives plans of towns and cities, detailed 
itineraries and hotel lists, etc., throughout France. Equally use- 
ful as the Guide-Michelin, but more bulky. 

La Carte Be'cherel. — Reproduced from that of the Etat Major, 
1-200,000. Price 2 fcs., 50c. 

Cartes de Dion. — Excellent four -colour maps of certain sec- 
tions environing the great cities. Published and sold by De 
Dion, Bouton et Cie. 

Sur Route (Atlas-Guide de Poche pour Cyclistes et Automobilistes). 
— Published by Hachette & Cie, 3 fcs., 50c. A most useful con- 
densed and abbreviated gazetteer of France, with a series of handy 
four-colour maps showing main roads sufficiently clearly for real 
use as an automobile route-book. 

A nnuaire General du Touring Club de France. — Hotel list, 
mecaniciens, etc., and prices of same throughout France. 

The Touring Club de France also issues an Annuaire pour 
VEtranger, containing similar information of the neighbouring 
countries. 

Guides-Joanne. — The most perfectly compiled series of guide- 
books in any language. The late editions of Normandie, 
Bretagne, etc., have miniature profile road maps and much other 
information of interest and value to automobile tourists. Seven- 
teen volumes, covering France, Algeria, and Corsica. 



The Touring Club Italiano issues a series of five excellent 
maps covering the whole of Italy. 

1. Lombardia, Piemonte, and Ligurie. 

2. Veneto. 

3. Central Italy. 

4. Southern Italy. 

5. Calabria and Sicily . 



Appendices 373 

Strode di Grande-Comunicazione — Italia — ( Main Roads of 
Italy). — An excellent profile road book of all of Italy; miniature 
plans of all cities and large towns, with gradients of roads, popu- 
lation, etc. 

Carte Taride — Italie, Section Nord. — Published by A. Taride, 
20 Bvd. St. Denis, Paris. Comprises Aoste, Bologne, Come, Flor- 
ence, Livourne, Milan, Nice, Padoua, Parma, Pise, Sienne, 
Trente, Turin, Venise. 1 fc. on paper, 2 fcs., 50c. cloth. 

Carte Taride — Italie, Section Centrale. — Uniform with above. 

SWITZERLAND 

Carte Routiere. — Published by the Touring Club de Suisse ; is 
issued in four sheets. 

L'Annuaire de Route Published by the Automobile Club de 

Suisse ; contains a small-scale road map, hotel list, etc. 

Cyclist's Touring Club (London) Road Book for South and Cen- 
tral Europe includes Switzerland. 

Carte Taride pour la Suisse. — A continuation of the excellent 
series of Cartes Tarides (Paris, 30 Bvd. St. Denis) 1 fc, 50c. 
paper, 3 fcs. on cloth. 

BELGIUM 

The Cartes Tarides (Paris, A. Taride, 20 Boulevard St. Denis) 
include Belgium under the Nos. 1 and 1 Bis. 

Cyclist's Touring Club (London) Road Book for Northern and 
Central Europe includes Belgium. 

Carte de Belgique, issued by the Touring Club de Belgique, 
covers all of Belgium in one sheet. 

Guide-Michelin pour la Belgique, Hollande, et aux Bords du Rhin 
contains Belgian hotel-list, plans of towns, etc. 

HOLLAND 

Road Atlas. — Published by the Touring Club of Holland, 
which also issues many detailed road and route books for the 
Pays Bas. 

Cyclists Touring Club (London) Road Book for North and Cen- 
tral Europe includes Holland. 

Guide-Michelin pour La Belgique includes Holland, Luxem- 
bourg, and the Banks of the Rhine, with information after the 
same manner as in the « Guide-Michelin "for France. 



374 Appendices 

A/standskaart van Nederland. — An admirable road map of all 
Holland in two sheets, showing also all canals and waterways. 

GERMANY 

Ravenstein's Road Maps of Central Europe. Scale about 4 miles 
to the inch. 

Taride's Bord du Rhin. — Excellent maps in three colours, main 
routes in red, with kilometric distances, towns, and picturesque 
sites clearly marked. 

Ravenstein's Road Book for Germany. — Two vols., North and 
South Germany. 

Cyclist's Touring Club {London) Road Book for Germany. 



Index of Places 



Abbeville, Fr., 57, 203 
Abingdon, Eng., 232, 233, 
Agde, Fr., 147-148. 
Aiguebelle, Fr., 96. 
Aigues-Mortes, Fr., 148-150, 151. 
Aix-les-Thermes, Fr., 130. 
Albster, Scot., 281. 
Alencon, Fr., 57. 
Altenahr, Ger., 330. 
Alton, Eng., 287. 
Amberley, Eng., 258. 
Amboise, Fr., 45, 106. 
Amiens, Fr., 44, 57, 200, 203. 
Amsterdam, Hoi., 98, 304, 312, 

313-315, 316, 340. 
Andernach, Ger., 332. 
Angers, Fr., 57. 
Angouleme, Fr., 57. 
Antibes, Fr., 170. 
Antwerp, Belg.. 22, 98, 183, 186, 

295-297, 301, 305. 
Aosta, Italy, 89. 
Aries, Fr., 140, 150, 157, 158, 

165-167. 
Arnhem, Hoi., 98. 
Arras, Fr., 212, 215, 216-217. 
Arundel, Eng., 257-258. 
Aschaffenburg, Ger., 331. 
Asmannshausen, Ger., 329, 330. 
Assisi, Italy, 154. 
Autun, Fr., 44, 57. 
Auvers, Fr., 192-194, 203, 
Auxerre, Fr., 57. 
Avignon, Fr., 169, 172, 348. 
Axat, Fr., 105. 
Azay le Rideau, Fr., 106. 



Bacharach, <7er., 326, 329. 
Baden, Ger., 332. 
Bagnerres-de-Bigorre, Fr., 133. 
Barcelona, -Spain, 89, 128, 129, 

135. 
Bar le Due, Fr., 177. 
Basel, Switz., 332. 
Bath, Eng., 46, 60, 61, 76, 225, 

226, 227, 229, 230, 236, 238- 

239, 274, 369, 370. 
Battle Abbey, Eng., 252. 
Bayonne, Fr., 137-141. 
Bazas, Fr., 41. 
Beaucaire, Fr., 168. 
Beaugency, Fr., 34, 105-106. 
Beautor, Fr., 186. 
Beauvais, Fr., 200. 
Becherbach, Ger., 330. 
Beckhampton, Eng., 237. 
Beek, Hoi., 97. 
Bellegarde, Fr., 168-169. 
Berlin, Ger., 90, 91, 93, 97, 340. 
Berne, Switz., 361. 
Berriedal, Scot., 281. 
Besancon, Fr., 57. 
Bessingheim, Ger., 331. 
Bethune, Fr., 218-219. 
Briers, Fr., 126-127, 147. 
Biarritz, Fr., 26, 89, 90, 122, 139- 

141, 204, 365. 
Biggar, Scot., 278. 
Bingen, Ger., 326, 332. 
Birmingham, Eng., 57, 369. 
Bischeim, Ger., 329. 
Bischofsheim, Ger., 331. 
Blackpool, Eng., 87. 



375 



376 



Index of Places 



Blaye, Fr., 116. 
Blois, Fr., 57, 106-109. 
Bodmin, Eng., 272. 
Boisemont, Fr., 188. 
Bologna, Italy, 97. 
Bonar Bridge, Scot., 280. 
Bonn, Ger., 326, 332. 
Bonnieres, Fr., 57, 185. 
Bordeaux, Fr., 41, 44, 56, 57, 

59, 93, 106, 111, 116-117, 

338, 339, 340, 341, 342. 
Boulogne, Fr., 199, 219, 256. 
Bourg-Madame, Fr., 129. 
Bourn, Eng., 258. 
Bournemouth, Eng., 87, 267, 

369. 
Brauneberg, Ger., 330. 
Breda, Hoi., 301, 303. 
Brentford, Eng., 227, 228. 
Breslau, Ger., 90, 95. 
Brest, Fr., 57. 
Briancon, Fr., 89. 
Briare, Fr., 57. 
Brighton, Ftt<7., 80, 87, 243, 254- 

256, 267, 339, 369. 
Brigue, Switz., 43. 361, 362. 
Bristol, Eng., 225, 226, 239, 275, 

369, 370. 
Bruges, Belg., 216, 291, 292-293. 
Brussels, Belg., 98, 288-292, 295, 

297, 309, 360. 
Buntingford, Eng., 76. 
Burntisland, Scot., 279. 
Burwash, Eng., 254. 

Caen, Fr., 57. 

Cahors, Fr., 57. 

Caithness, Scot., 370. 

Calais, Fr., 57, 199, 203, 219-221. 

Calne, Eng., 237. 

Cambo, Fr., 138-139. 

Cambrai, Fr., 57, 215-216, 217. 

Cambridge, Eng., 76. 

Cannes, Fr., 141. 

Canterbury, Eng., 22, 244, 245- 

247. 
Carcassonne, Fr., 121, 124-126, 

149. 
Carlisle, Eng., 277-278, 370. 
Carlsruhe, Ger., 332. 
■ Carpentras, Fr., 166. 
Cassan, Chateau de, Fr., 195. 
Castelnaudry, Fr., 123-124. 



Caudebec, Fr., 25. 
Cavaillon, Fr., 166. 
Caversham, Eng., 232. 
Chalons, Fr., 44, 57. 
Chambord, Fr., 106. 
Chantilly, Fr., 195, 203-205, 206. 
Chart-res, Fr., 20, 57. 
Chateauroux, Fr., 57. 
Chateau Thierry, Fr., 178, 207. 
Chatellerault, Fr., 32, 110. 
Chatham, Eng., 245. 
Chaumont, Fr., 106. 
Chauny, Fr., 187. 
Cheddar, Eng., 275. 
Chenonceaux, Fr., 106. 
Cheverny, Fr., 106. 
Chichester, Eng., 258-259. 
Chippenham, Eng., 236-238. 
Chiswick, Eng., 227. 
Choisy-le-Roi, Fr., 103, 104. 
Clapham Junction, Eng., 195. 
Clermont-Ferrand, Fr., 57. 
Cleves, Ger., 322. 
Clifton, Ft?#., 240. 
Coblenz, Ger., 326, 332. 
Cognac, Fr., 115-116. 
Cologne, Ger., 22, 90, 95, 323- 

324 332. 
Compiegne, Fr., 195, 196-198. 
Conflans, Fr., 187-188. 
Coucy-le-Chateau, Fr., 210-211. 
CourceUes, Fr., 182, 183. 
Courdimanche, Fr., 188. 
Cowes, Eng., 261. 
Crawlev, Eng., 243, 244. 
Crefield, Ger., 322. 
Creil, Fr., 195. 

Crepy-en-Valois, Fr., 206-207. 
Cromer, Eng., 267. 
Croyden, Eng., 243. 
Cuneo, Italy, 89. 
Cusel, Ger., 330. 

Dalkeith, Scot, 278. 
Dartmoor, Fng-., 33, 272. 
Datchet, Eng., 230. 
Deidesheim, Ger., 328. 
Delft, HoL, 307, 308, 309. 
Delftshaven, Hoi, 309. 
Deptford, Eng., 244. 
Dieppe, Fr., 253, 254, 256, 340. 
Dijon, Fr., 57, 96, 175. 
Dinant, Belg., 288. 



Index of Places 



377 



Dingwall, Scot., 280. 
Dordrecht, Hoi., 303-305, 306. 
Dorking, Eng., 247. 
Douai, Fr., 57, 217-218. 
Dover, Eng., 46, 221, 244, 247- 

249 253. 
Dresden', Get., 97, 332. 
Dunkerque, Fr., 59. 
Diisseldorf, Ger., 98, 322-323. 
Dymchurch, Eng., 249. 

Eastbourne, Eng., 243, 252-253. 

East dean, Eng., 253. 

Ecloo, Hoi., 34. 

Ecouis, Fr., 57. 

Edinburgh, Scot., 62, 278-279, 

369, 370. 
Emmerich, Ger., 322. 
Epstein, Ger., 331. 
Eragny, Fr., 188. 
Erbach, Ger., 326. 
Ermenonville, Fr., 133, 195. 
Etaples, Fr., 203. 
Evequemont, Fr., 188. 
Evreux, Fr., 55, 57. 
Exeter, Eng., 229, 272, 369. 
Exmoor, Eng., 33, 272. 

Faringdon, Eng., 233, 235, 236. 
Ferrara, Italy, 98. 
Feuntarabia, Spain, 89, 142-144. 
Fleury-sur-Andelle, Fr., 57. 
Florence, Italy, 97, 363. 
Foix, Fr., 131. 
Folkestone, Eng., 248, 249. 
Fontainebleau, Fr., 57. 
Fontarabia, Spain (see Feuntara- 
bia). 
Frankfort, Ger., 328, 331, 332. 
Fribourg, Ger., 331. 

Gap, Fr., 89. 

Gaubischeim, Ger., 328. 

Geisenheim, Ger., 326, 329. 

Gemblout, Belg., 98. 

Geneva, Switz., 96. 

Gennevilliers, Fr., 202. 

Genoa, Italy, 90. 

Ghent, Bety., 183, 291, 292, 293. 

Gisors, Fr., 57. 

Giverny, Fr., 184. 



Givet, Fr., 285, 287. 
Givors, Fr., 173, 174. 
Gloucester, Eng., 275, 348. 
Godesberg, Ger., 332. 
Gondo, Italy, 43, 362. 
Goring, Fr*?., 232-233. 
Gouda, Hoi., 306, 307. 
Graach, Ger., 330. 
Graefenberg, Ger., 329. 
Granton, Scot., 279. 
Gravesend, Eng., 244. 
Great Marlow, Frcgr., 230-231. 
Greenwich, Eng., 244. 
Grenada, Spain, 135. 
Grenoble, Fr., 348. 
Gretna Green, Scot., 278. 
Griiningen, Ger., 327. 
Guben, Ger., 332. 
Guildford, Eng., 247, 260, 348. 

Haarlem, Hoi, 312-313, 315. 
Hague, The, Hoi, 307, 308, 309- 

310. 
Hammersmith, Eng., 227. 
Hanover, Ger., 90, 95, 97. 
Harrogate, Eng., 369. 
Hastings, Eng.. 251-252. 
Heer-Agimont, Belg., 287. 
Heidelberg, Ger., 327, 331, 332. 
Helmsdale, Scot, 281. 
Hendaye, Fr., 135, 142. 
Henley, Eng., 231-232. 
Henley-in-Arden, Eng., 231. 
High Wycombe, Eng., 348. 
Hochheim, Ger., 328, 329. 
Holyhead, Eng., 63, 275, 369. 
Homburg, Ger., 26. 
Hospitalet, Fr., 130. 
Hounslow, Eng., 225, 227, 228- 

230. 
Hove, Eng., 254. 
Hythe, Eng., 249. 

Innsbruck, Tyrol, 340. 
Inverness, Sco*., 280, 281, 369, 

370. 
Ipswich, Eng., 244. 
Isle of Wight, Eng., 261-263. 

Janville, Fr., 187. 
Johannisberg, Ger., 326, 329. 
John o' Groat's, Scot., 268-270, 
281, 369, 37: 



378 



Index of Places 



Judenburg, Aus., 97, 
Jumieges, Fr., 36. 

Keinigsbach, Ger., 330. 
Kelmscott, Eng., 235. 
Kesseling, Ger., 330. 
Kew, Eng., 227. 
Kinross, Scot., 279. 
Koesterick, Ger., 328. 
Konigsbach, Ger., 329. 
Konigstein, Ger., 327. 

LaFere, Fr., 213. 

La Ferte-Milon, Fr., 207. 

La Fleche, Fr., 57. 

Land's End, £%., 268-271, 369. 

Lancaster, Fh<7., 276. 

Langeais, Fr., 106. 

Lanslebourg, Fr., 96. 

Laon, Fr., 211-213, 214. 

La Roche-Guyon, Fr., 55, 184- 

185. 
La Rochelle, Fr., 112, 113-114. 
La Turbie, Fr., 339, 341, 348. 
Laubenheim, Ger., 328, 329. 
Laval, Fr., 57. 

La Voute-sur-Rhone, Fr., 171. 
Lechdale, Eng., 233-235- 
Leeds, Eng., 369. 
Le Mans, Fr., 57. 
Les Andelys-sur-Seine, Fr., 25, 

181, 182. 
Les Baux, Fr., 36, 125, 167. 
Les Rousses, Fr., 96. 
Les Saintes, Fr. {see Stes. Maries- 

de-la-Mer). 
Leyden, Hoi., 311-312. 
Liege, Belg., 295. 
Lille, Fr., 57. 
Limoges, Fr., 57. 
Lintz, Ger., 330. 
Liphook, Eng., 260. 
Lisieux, Fr., 57. 
L'Isle Adam, Fr., 193, 194-195, 

203. 
Littlehampton, Eng., 257. 
Liverpool, Eng., 276, 316, 369. 
Loch Leven, Scot., 279. 
Lockerbie, Scot., 278. 
Loches, Fr., 106. 
London, Eng., 4, 12, 13, 19, 24, 

42, 46, 57, 62, 76, 77, 80, 82, 

103, 122, 140, 164, 220, 225, 



226, 227, 229, 230, 243, 244, 
247, 252, 254, 255, 259, 260, 
263, 276, 294, 339, 369, 370, 
373. 

Lorich, Ger., 328. 

Louviers, Fr., 81. 

Luchon, Fr., 133. 

Luynes, Fr., 106. 

Lybster, Scot., 281. 

Lyons, Fr., 32, 44, 56, 57, 172, 
173-175, 309, 340. 

Macon, Fr., 57. 
Madrid, Spain, 89, 341. 
Magdebourg, Ger., 97. 
Maidenhead, Eng., 225, 230. 
Maillane, Fr., 165. 
Manchester, Eng., 276, 369. 
Mannheim, Ger., 332. 
Mantes, Fr., 185. 
Mapledurham, Eng., 232. 
Margate, Eng., 243, 247, 294. 
Marken, Hoi., 314. 
Marlborough, Eng., 236. 
Marly-Bailly, Fr., 104. 
Marseilles, Fr., 32, 44, 56, 90, 

116, 128, 129, 163-164, 172, 

339. 
Martigues, Fr., 158-159, 163, 

164. 
Mauleon-Licharre, Fr., 135-136. 
Maurecourt, Fr., 188. 
Mayence, Ger., 326, 328, 332. 
Meaux, Fr., 98, 178, 348. 
Meissen, Ger., 331. 
Melun, Fr., 57. 
Menton, Fr., 19, 141. 
Mentz, Ger., 329. 
Mery, Fr., 192, 193. 
Mestre, Italy, 97. 
Metz, Ger., 57. 
Meulan, Fr., 185-186, 188. 
Meung, Fr., 34, 106. 
Mezieres, Fr., 57. 
Milan, Italy, 90. 
Minden, Ger., 95. 
Mittelheim, Ger., 326 
Modane, Fr., 96. 
Moffat, Scot., 278. 
Monnikendam, i7o£., 314. 
Montargis, Fr., 177. 
Monte Carlo, Monaco, 26, 87, 90, 

139, 140, 204, 293, 314, 348. 



Index of Places 



379 



Montelimar, Fr., 105, 171. 
Mont Louis, Fr., 129. 
Montpellier, Fr., 148. 
Montrejeau, Fr., 132-133. 
Montreuil-sur-Mer, Fr., 203. 
Moulins, Fr., 32, 34, 57, 177. 
Moutiers, Fr., 89. 
Munster, Ger., 97. 
Murzzuschlag, Aits., 97. 



Namur, Belg., 98, 288, 289, 293. 
Nantes, Fr., 45, 56, 57. 
Naples, Italy, 44, 90. 
Narbonne, Fr., 127, 147. 
Naumberg, Ger., 332. 
Neuilly-sur-Seine, Fr., 57. 
Neuwied, Ger., 330. 
Nevers, Fr., 33, 57, 177. 
Newhaven, Eng., 253-254. 
New Romney, Eng., 249. 
New Shoreham, Eng., 257. 
Nice, Fr., 74, 87, 141, 339, 341. 
Nierstein. Ger., 328, 329. 
Nimes, Fr., 140, 157, 158. 
Niort, Fr., 109, 110-113. 
Nouveau Saales, Fr., 333. 
Noyon, Fr., 44, 57, 59, 198, 199- 

200. 
Nuremberg, Ger., 327. 
Nymegen, Hoi., 98, 316-317, 321, 

322. 



Oloron, Fr., 135. 
Oppenheim, Ger., 328. 
Orange, Fr., 170-171. 
Orleans, Fr., 56, 57, 105-106, 

110. 
Ostende, Belg., 140, 287, 293, 

294. 
Oxford, Eng., 42, 235. 



Parapelune, Spain, 136, 137. 

Pangborne, Eng., 232. 

Paris, Fr., 7, 10, 19, 22, 24, 25, 
32, 33, 41, 45, 46, 49, 51, 
52, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 80, 
90. 91, 93, 94, 96, 98, 103- 
104, 105, 109, 110, 111, 112, 
116, 140, 170, 177, 178, 181, 
186, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 



194, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 
220, 285, 287, 290, 338, 339, 
340, 341, 342, 351, 352, 
354, 357, 371, 373. 

Pau, Fr., 41, 121, 134-135. 

Penicuik, Scot., 278. 

Penrith, Eng., 348. 

Penzance, Eng., 270, 271. 

Perigueux, Fr., 105. 

Perplgnan, Fr., 127-129, 147. 

Perth, Scot., 279-280. 

Petersfield, Eng., 260. 

Pevensey, Eng., 252. 

Piesport, Ger., 330. 

Pithiviers, Fr., 104-105. 

Plaisance, Fr., 96. 

Plumstead, Eng., 244. 

Poitiers, Fr., 57. 109-110. 

Pompeii, Italy, 89, 125, 167. 

Pontafel, Aits., 97. 

Pontebba, Italy, 97. 

Pontoise, Fr., 57, 189-191, 192, 
193, 202. 

Pont St, Esprit, 171. 

Pont St. Maxence, Fr., 196. 

Porte, Fr., 130. 

Port Marly, Fr., 104. 

Portsmouth, Eng., 46, 259-261, 
369. 

Potsdam, Ger., 95. 

Prades, Fr., 129. 

Prague, Aus., 90, 94, 95, 97. 

Preston, Eng., 276. 

Pulborough, Eng., 258. 

Ramsgate, Eng., 247. 
Reading, Eng., 230, 232. 
Rech, Ger., 330. 
Redhill, Eng., 243. 
Reichenberg, Aus., 34. 
Reims, Fr., 44, 57, 90. 
Rennes, Fr., 56, 57. 
Rethel, Fr., 285-286. 
Rhetel, Fr., 57. 
Ribecourt, Fr., 199. 
Rinsport, Ger., 330. 
Riiilev, Eng., 260. 
Riqueval, Fr., 215. 
Rochefort. Fr.. 114. 
Rochester. Eng., 244-245. 
Rocroi, Fr., 98, 286-287. 
Rome, Italy, 92. 
Rosslyn, Scot., 278. 



380 



Index of Places 



Roth, Get., 392. 

Rotterdam, Hoi, 295, 305-307, 

312 316. 
Rottingdean, Eng., 254. 
Rouen, Fr., 25, 55, 56, 57, 116, 

192, 338, 348. 
Rougemont, Fr., 195. 
Roussillon, Fr., 147. 
Rudesheim, Ger., 326, 329. 
Runnymede, Eng., 230. 
Ryde, Eng., 261. 
Rye, Fflfl., 249-251, 257, 258. 

Saintes, Fr., 44, 114-115. 

Salon, Fr., 64, 165, 166, 341. 

San Remo, Italy, 74. 

San Sebastian, Spain, 89. 

Scarborough, Eng., 87. 

Sceaux, Fr., 104. 

Scheveningen, Hoi., 310-311. 

Schiedam, Hoi, 307-309. 

Schierstein, Ger., 331. 

Senlis, Fr., 57, 59, 203, 205-206. 

Sens, Fr., 96. 

Shap Summit, Eng., 277. 

Shiplake Mill, Eng., 232. 

Shrewsbury, Fng., 275, 276. 

Sittingbourne, Eng., 245. 

Slough, Fncr., 230. 

Soissons, Fr., 44, 57, 209-210. 

Sonning, Eng., 232. 

Sorbon, Fr., 286. 

Southampton, Fn^., 261, 369. 

Southend, Eng., 243, 294. 

Southsea, Eng., 87, 259. 

Southwark, Fn^r., 244. 

Spire, Ger., 332. 

St. Beat, Fr., 136. 

St. Brieuc, Fr., 57. 

St.Cyr, Fr., 104. 

St. Denis, Fr., 202. 

St. Die\ Fr., 333. 

Steinberg, Ger., 329. 

Stes. Maries-de-la-Mer, Fr., 151- 
157. 

St. Gaudens, Fr., 132. 

St. Germain, Fr., 55, 80, 103, 
104, 202. 

St. Gilles, Fr., 151, 157. 

St. Girons, Fr., 131-132. 

St. Goar, Ger., 332. 

St. Jean-de-Luz, Fr., 141-142. 



St. Jeanne de Maurienne, Fr., 

96. 
St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, Fr., 136- 

137. 
St. Leonards, Eng., 251. 
St. Maurice, Switz., 361. 
St. Michael's Mount, Eng., 271. 
Stonehenge, Fn^., 247. 
St. Ouen l'Aumone, Fr., 191. 
St. Quentin, Fr., 57, 212-215. 
St. Raphael, Fr., 19. 
St. Remy, Fr., 166, 168, 170. 
Strasburg, Ger., 57. 332, 333. 
Streatley, Eng., 232-233. 
Stroud, Eng., 245. 
Susa, Zfaty, 89, 96, 348. 

Tain, Scot., 280. 

Tarare, Fr., 55. 

Tarascon, Fr., 168. 

Tarbes, Fr., 133-134. 

Taunton, Eng., 272. 

Thrumster, Sccrt., 281. 

Torquay, Eng., 24. 

Toulouse, Fr., 57, 121, 122-123. 

Tournai, Fr., 295. 

Tournon, Fr., 171. 

Tours, Fr., 56, 57, 105, 107-109. 

Treves, Ger., 330. 

Triel, Fr., 183, 185, 186, 188. 

Trouville, Fr., 19, 80, 186. 

Troyes, Fr., 44, 57. 

Tubingen, Ger., 327. 

Turin, Italy, 96, 348. 

Twyford, Eng., 230. 

Udine, /taZy, 97. 

Utrecht, Hoi, 98, 315-316. 

Valdrach, Ger., 330. 

Valence, Fr., 171, 172. 

Venice, Ztaty, 97, 304, 305, 307, 

314 - 
Vernon, Fr., 55, 183, 184 
Versailles, Fr., 80, 104, 341. 
Vienna, Aus., 90, 94, 97, 340- 

341. 
Villac, Aus., 97. 

Villeneuve-les- Avignon, Fr., 17U. 
Villeneuve St. Georges, Fr., 103. 
Villers-Cotterets, Fr., 206, 207- 

209. 
Viviers, Fr., 171. 
Volendam, Hoi, 314. 



Index of Places 



381 



Wangen, Ger., 331. 
Warrington, Eng., 276. 
Wehlen, Ger., 330. 
Wells, Eng., 274. 
Wesel, Ger., 97, 98, 322. 
Whitechurch. Eng., 275. 
Wick, Scot., 281. 
Winchelsea, Eng., 251. 
Winchester, Eng., 247. 
Windsor, £>!#., 230. 
Woolwich, Eng.. 244. 
Worcester, Eng., 275, 369. 



Worms, Ger., 328, 332. 
Worthing, Eng., 243, 257. 

Xanten, Ger., 322. 

Yarmouth, Eng., 244. 
York, £nj/., 369, 370. 
Ypres, Belg., 294-295. 

Zeltingen, Ger., 330. 
Zinnwalo, Aus., 97. 



